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By SAMUEL S. COX. 
 
 Arctic Sunbeams ; or, FROM BROADWAY TO THE Bos- 
 
 PHORUS BY WAY OF THE NORTH CAPE. THROUGH 
 
 HOLLAND, DENMARK, NORWAY, LAPLAND, SWEDEN, 
 FINLAND, RUSSIA, AND THE EUXINE SEA, TO THE Bos- 
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 11 The attractive manner in which this book is written, its graphic 
 
 description, and its light humor, give it almost the charm of a romance." 
 
 National Republican. 
 
 Orient Sunbeams ; or, FROM THE PORTE TO THE PYRAMIDS 
 BY WAY OF PALESTINE. FROM THE BOSPHORUS AND 
 CONSTANTINOPLE TO SMYRNA, EPHESUS, DAMASCUS, 
 JAFFA, JERUSALEM, BETHLEHEM, ALEXANDRIA, CAIRO, 
 HELIOPOLIS, THE PYRAMIDS. 8vo, illustrated $2 oo 
 
 " Without any pretence to be thoroughly descriptive or illustrative, 
 it completes a series of entertaining, thoughtful, and agreeable sketches." 
 N. Y. World. 
 
 The Isles of The Princes ; or, THE PLEASURES OF PRIN- 
 KIPO. 8vo, illustrated . . . . $2 oo 
 
 The three volumes in a box $5.75. 
 
 Free Land and Free Trade. THE LESSONS OF THE ENG- 
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 cloth $o 75 
 
 " Clearly and forcibly written and containing new and striking illus- 
 trations."^. Y. World. 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, NEW YORK AND LONDON. 
 
THE 
 
 ISLES OF THE PRINCES; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE PLEASURES OF PRINKIPO 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL S. OX 
 
 LATE UNITED STATES MINISTER TO TURKEY, AND AUTHOR OF " BUCKEYE ABROAD ; " 
 
 "WINTER SUNBEAMS;" "WHY WE LAUGH;" "FREE LAND AND FREE TRADE;" 
 
 "ARCTIC SUNBEAMS;" "ORIENT SUNBEAMS;" "THREE DECADEV OF 
 
 FEDERAL LEGISLATION ; " " DIVERSIONS OF A DIPLOMAT IN 
 
 TURKEY ; " ETC. 
 
 " Summer isles of Eden, lying in deep, purple spheres of sea." 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 With Map and Illustrations. 
 
 NEW YORK & LONDON 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 1887 
 
COPYRIGHT BY 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 1887 
 
 Press of 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 New York 
 
TO MRS. JULIA A. COX. 
 
 THIS volume faintly describes the delights of 
 our Grecian home at Prinkipo, among the Isles of 
 the Princes. It is intended as a souvenir and 
 record for each of us. It recalls our pleasant 
 sojourn in those classic isles, and the many cour- 
 tesies bestowed upon us, " strangers in a strange 
 land." We both desire to give our appreciation 
 and thanks a form more substantial than that of a 
 memory merely. Here we can attempt this, and 
 make our response in grateful recognition of the 
 kindness with which we were received and the 
 happiness of our sojourn. 
 
 It is fit, therefore, that to you, my dear wife, I 
 should dedicate this volume ; for if we have 
 achieved any measure of success, socially or other- 
 wise, in our island home, may I not say that it is 
 due to those qualities of kindness and complai- 
 sance which you possess, and which have made 
 our lives one in an ever increasing circle of 
 felicity ? 
 
 S. S. Cox. 
 
 in 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THIS little volume is the episode of a summer's 
 enjoyment and observation among the Princes 
 Isles, in the old Propontis. It is intended to be 
 a recital of the many diversive excursions in and 
 around these islands and the adjacent places in 
 Asia and Europe. It is supplementary to a more 
 complete account of the author's experience while 
 minister of the United States to Turkey. That 
 account, in its fulness, is to be found in a volume 
 entitled " Diversions of a Diplomat in Turkey," 
 published by C. L. Webster & Co., of New York 
 City. 
 
 These Isles of the Princes lie in sight of Stam- 
 boul and its splendors, and of the mountains of 
 Asia, dominated by the Mysean Olympus. They 
 are glorious in physical loveliness. They are still 
 the "Isles of Greece," although under Ottoman 
 rule. Out of their blue waters, at morn and 
 eve, the beauty of the Grecian myth arises, to 
 grace the isles with her smiles. Upon them burn 
 " the larger constellations." They are fitly named 
 " Isles of Princes. " Upon them the palaces of the 
 
 M505442 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 princes of old Byzantium were erected. Here, 
 too, were their monasteries and prisons. The 
 relics of these lines of civil and ecclesiastical 
 empire are nearly all faded ; but the monas- 
 teries of the Orthodox Greek Church still hold 
 here their eminences, as well by virtue of their 
 antique titles as by their superb situations. 
 
 Under the light of these associations, and with 
 the fantastic glimmer of human caprice and pas- 
 sion which the pages of Gibbon best picture, and 
 under the constantly recurring phases of the 
 "Eastern Question," the summer of 1886 was 
 passed by the writer. 
 
 The impressions herein recorded cannot, per- 
 haps, be of more than fleeting interest to the 
 reader. Their very diversity indicates the sepa- 
 rate and distinct hues of a prism, and these give 
 their colors to the author's pages. 
 
 S. S. Cox. 
 
 NEW YORK, May i, 1887. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER. PAGE 
 
 I. THE ISLES OF THE PRINCES IN THE PROPONTIS 
 
 THEIR GOVERNMENT A*ND PEOPLE i 
 
 II. ISLES OF THE PRINCES THEIR GEOGRAPHY AND 
 
 HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS 18 
 
 III. HEALTH AND OTHER ATTRACTIONS OF PRINKIPO . 30 
 
 IV. HOME LIFE IN PRINKIPO OUR NEIGHBORS 
 
 LITTLE FOLKS FISHERMEN AND SONGS . 43 
 V. PRINKIPO ITS GARDENS AND VILLAS . . 69 
 
 VI. PRINKIPO No RUNNING WATER STRANGE 
 NOISES THE VOCIFEROUS DONKEY THE 
 
 BIRDS 78 
 
 VII. COMPOSITE PEOPLE OF PRINKIPO OLD CUSTOMS 
 
 AND REVELS ITALIAN INFLUENCE ~T .96 
 
 VIII. PRINKIPO ITS MONASTERY OF ST. GEORGE . 117 
 IX. THE GREEK AND OTHER MONASTERIES OF THE 
 
 ORIENT ^ 
 
 X. OUR NEIGHBORS OF THE CHRISTOS MONASTERY 140 
 XI. TRIP TO HALKI, ISLE OF COPPER GREEK COL- 
 LEGES SPLENDID SCENERY . . . .154 
 XII. ANTIGONE AND PROTI HISTORIC AND OTHER 
 
 INCIDENTS 180 
 
 XIII. PLATI AND OXIA SIR HENRY BULWER'S FATAL 
 
 LITTLE ISLE His DIPLOMACY AND HIS ECCEN- 
 TRICITIES . ...... 189 
 
 XIV. PRINKIPO AS A HERMITAGE CLOISTERED AMEN- 
 
 ITIES A RICH LIBRARY 219 
 
 XV. THE LIBRARY UNDER NEW ASPECTS . . . 233 
 
 vii 
 
Vlll 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 XVI. INFERNAL FIRE AND LALLA ROOKH DIPLO- 
 MACY THE ROMANCE AND POETRY OF PETRO- 
 LEUM 249 
 
 XVII. JAUNT TO THE PALACE OF BEYLERBEY ITS ASSOCIA- 
 TIONS, MENAGERIE AND TIGER RULES FOR A 
 TIGER HUNT ....... 
 
 XVIII. ACROSS THE CHANNEL OF PRINKIPO HANNIBAL 
 
 AND HIS GRAVE 
 
 XIX. ASIAN SHORES NIOEA AND NICOMEDIA . 
 XX. BROUSSA ITS ENTERPRISE AND HISTORY MOUNT 
 OLYMPUS ....... 
 
 XXI. EUROPEAN SHORE SAN STEFANO AND THE 
 
 TREATY 329 
 
 XXII. PRINKIPO ITS GREEK AND OTHER WOMEN . 338 
 
 XXIII. TH.E TURKISH WOMEN A PRINCESS OF EGYPT 
 
 INDEED AN ESCAPADE . . . -354 
 
 XXIV. FAREWELL TO PRINKIPO AND ITS PLEASURES . 369 
 
 264 
 
 287 
 302 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 VIEW OF PRINKIPO Frontispiece 
 
 ALBANIAN POLICE ........ 14 
 
 MAP OF THE BOSPHORUS AND PRINCES ISLES . . l8 
 
 PEDDLER OF MEATS ........ 52 
 
 ICE-CREAM PEDDLER 6p 
 
 WATER-CARRIERS 70 
 
 DONKEY RESTING HIS HEAD IN AN EGYPTIAN TEMPLE . 88 
 
 JACK AND GRIZZLY FIGHT 90 
 
 THE ARABY-TURKISH CARRIAGE ..... 104 
 
 GREEK GIRLS ......... 106 
 
 MONASTERY OF METEORA I2O 
 
 BEATING THE " SIMANDRO " 128 
 
 GREEK FATHER ARSENIUS AND HIS SABRE . . . 130 
 
 FINDING RARE MANUSCRIPTS 136 
 
 VENDER OF SIMITS 142 
 
 BEGGAR . . 144 
 
 OECUMENICAL PATRIARCH DEMETRIUS V. . . I 5 2 
 
 LEGATION STEAM LAUNCH " SUNSET " OFF PRINKIPO . 156 
 
 HALKI .......... l6o 
 
 " SOYER TRES HEUREUX " 232 
 
 INTERIOR OF CIRCASSIAN HOME 236 
 
 MAP OF THE REGION OF FIRE AND PETROLEUM . . 250 
 
 TIGER-HUNT FOR THE MINISTER 270 
 
 HANNIBAL'S GRAVE . 301 
 
 GREEK WOMAN FROM THE INTERIOR .... 338 
 
 TURKISH WOMAN 354 
 
 TURKISH WOMEN ON A DONKEY-RIDE .... 356 
 
 " FAR AWAY MOSES " 37** 
 
 ix 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE PLEASURES OF PRINKIPO. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ISLES OF THE PRINCES IN THE PROPONTIS 
 
 THEIR GOVERNMENT AND PEOPLE. 
 
 THERE are nine of these isles, of which five 
 Prinkipo, Halki, Antigone, Proti and Terevinthos 
 (Androvichi) are inhabited; the other four 
 Oxia, Plati, Nyandros and Pita are uninhabited. 
 The five first-mentioned have been inhabited for 
 ages past. The great Doge, Henry Dandolo, who 
 was the soul of the Fourth Crusade, advised the 
 Crusaders, who were then encamped at San Ste- 
 fano, just beyond the walls of Constantinople, 
 " not to forage in the Thracian plains, but rather 
 to try these islands qui sont habitues de genz y et 
 labor ^es de blez et de viandes et d'autres biens" 
 
 They were called in ancient times " Demonisi," 
 and under this appellation they are mentioned by 
 Aristotle, who says of one of them : " Demonisos, 
 an island of the Chalcedonians, deriving its name 
 
2 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 from its founder, Demonisos, famous for the gold 
 dust it produces, which is most valuable as a cure 
 for those suffering from the eyes." 
 
 The Turks call them collectively " Khizil Ada- 
 lar " Red Islands from the peculiar color of 
 their soil. 
 
 The early Roman had a taste for beauty. 
 When he became master of the East the mythical 
 and mystical beauty of the Greek islands allured 
 him. He liked the climate, which the sea softened 
 alike during summer and winter. The islands of 
 the Bay of Naples became favorite abodes for the 
 opulent of Imperial Rome, and Lesbos, described 
 as a noble and pleasant island by Tacitus, was a 
 royal retreat for a Roman governor in exile. 
 
 Some liken these isles and waters to those of 
 the Malayan archipelago. There the scenes are 
 tropical and the waters luminous with phospho- 
 rescent beauty. Those who have seen the inland 
 sea of Japan, compare its charm of water and sky 
 to the deep blue sea and overarching glory of 
 the Grecian isles. I have often been reminded, 
 w r hile sailing amidst these isles, of the sunny 
 sheen and the verdant hills and mountains of our 
 Antilles. In praising the Princes group I give 
 the palm to no other scenery, for to the beauty 
 of nature in the islands of Greece, like those of 
 Prinkipo and the other Isles of the Princes, there 
 is an added charm : it is that of historical and 
 
UNITY WITH VARIETY. * 
 
 poetical associations. Their historical associations 
 are the annals of ancient empire, Asian and Euro- 
 pean ; and their poetical associations have as their 
 aureole a golden radiance, under which 
 
 " Mildly dimpling, ocean's cheek 
 Reflects the tints of many a peak, 
 Caught by the laughing tides that lave 
 These Edens of the Eastern wave." 
 
 There were nine muses. The Princes Isles are 
 the same in number as those sisters. The muses 
 had various functions in the hierarchy of song. 
 These isles have a similar condition in the econ- 
 omy of nature, not to speak of their artistic utili- 
 ties. Their beauty and allurements are as varied 
 as the hues of the waters around them. Yet they 
 are similar; and, notwithstanding differences in 
 history, size and cultivation, they cannot be ac- 
 counted aliens to each other. The same geology, 
 the same sun, the same production, the same in- 
 sects even, give them a unity in variety which 
 would be as pleasing as one of Sophocles's plays 
 to a scholar or as the E pluribus unum to a patri- 
 otic lover of our starry ensign. Like the Iris 
 which is seen with every dash of the clear water of 
 the Propontis (or Marmora) varios insula col- 
 ores, this group, unless we except the bay of Na- 
 ples, is without a peer in the archipelagoes or 
 waters of our globe. 
 
4 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 The isles are on the latitude of New York 
 but they have not its winter sleet, snow, chill, and 
 inclemency. They are a little south-east of Con- 
 stantinople. They are sheltered from the harsh 
 winds of the Black Sea, as the Bosphorus is not, by 
 the northern range of Asiatic mountains. They 
 take on the climate and characteristics and have 
 the same people that inhabited the Isles of Greece 
 of which Homer and Byron delighted to sing. 
 
 It is difficult to affirm after the lapse of many 
 hundred years that the people who reside upon 
 the shores of the Greek islands are other than 
 a mixed race. They are of the Greek, Roman, 
 and Turkish races. Their only sign of patriotism 
 is a fervid attachment to their own islands and 
 the emotion by which they are bound to their or- 
 thodox religion. One must go inland upon these 
 isles of Greece to find the Greek of our classic en- 
 thusiasm and patriotic frenzy. In this respect the 
 Isles of the Princes are exceptional. The body of 
 their population is of unmixed Greek origin. It 
 needs no ethnographical chart to show this ; the 
 features of the people demonstrate it. The pop- 
 ulation is nearly all Greek. It numbers over ten 
 thousand. Their government by the Porte is 
 hardly felt. 
 
 Mohammed II., the conqueror of Constanti- 
 nople, was wiser than his contemporaries. The 
 Greeks were allowed by him, through their own 
 officers, to supervise their own ceremonious relig- 
 
MOSLEM LIBERALITY. 5 
 
 ion in the very city of Constantinople. That 
 Sultan pensioned many of the Greek clergy to 
 keep up the establishment of their faith. He did 
 not antagonize the millions in the provinces of 
 Greece who were under the crescent. He was 
 content to exact from them only the recognition 
 of his secular power. These isles were given in 
 fee to the Greek population. Thereupon they 
 flocked hither, with such wealth as was spared to 
 them from the sacking of the city. Here they 
 found already built their religious houses and 
 churches, sacred for a thousand years to their 
 faith. Here they built their villas, and thence 
 daily sailed in their pinnaces to the city, when on 
 business or pleasure intent. 
 
 What kind of a government have these isles ? 
 Upon some of them, the smaller ones, like Pita, 
 Androvichi, Nyandros and Oxia, there are no resi- 
 dents. Upon Plati Sir Henry Bulwer's Isle, so 
 called there are a few folk cultivating the soil 
 under an Armenian peasant. This peasant is the 
 gentle castellan. He watches the tumble-down 
 castles which the English minister erected in one 
 of his eccentric moods. Consequently upon only 
 four of the isles is there need of a government or 
 police. What do the police here ? 
 
 One of their functions is the protection of the 
 few trees from the goats. The islands are trav- 
 ersed daily by herds of these voracious animals. 
 
6 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 They are generally associated with the gentlest of 
 big-tailed sheep. Both are under one shepherd.' 
 But as the goat will eat anything, even an Ameri- 
 can petroleum can, and especially as he will climb 
 the rocks and almost trees for anything verdant, 
 he is the pest, not only of these isles, where some 
 verdure is left, but of the Orient. When the 
 young boys and girls who are shepherds are aloof 
 from the forester, owner, or police, in remote 
 places, they help the goats to make havoc of the 
 woods and foliage. In these countries, almost de- 
 nuded of trees by fire and war and reckless peas- 
 ants who know and care nothing for the sanitary, 
 climatic and agricultural value of trees, this devas- 
 tation was simply inevitable. Cyprus was, until the 
 English control, almost ruined by the greedy goat. 
 Last summer, when venturing up the pretty creek 
 out of the Bosphorus, whereon are situated the 
 " Sweet Waters of Asia," a mile or more with the 
 meandering stream, I saw a couple of gentle shep- 
 herd youths, with a flock of goats, on the beauti- 
 ful hillside. The boys were in the trees. They 
 had " little hatchets " and saws. They were cut- 
 ting off the limbs for the sustenance of their flock. 
 Thus passeth away the glory of these little Leban- 
 ons of Asia ! 
 
 These isles, however, are now pretty well 
 guarded. They bid fair to preserve what bosky 
 beauty and sylvan shade they have. 
 
DESTRUCTION OF FORESTS. j 
 
 The Sultan is wise beyond most of his subjects. 
 He preserves the grand Belgrade forests, in whose 
 cool haunts, from the borders of the Bosphorus to 
 the Black Sea shore, there are miles of splendid 
 roads through deep, verdurous alleys and paths, 
 for equestrians and carriages. Deer still frequent 
 these woods. These Belgrade woods are made 
 famous by the vivid descriptions of Lady Mary 
 Montagu, who sojourned there when her husband 
 was minister. Besides this forest, the Sultan has 
 made his grounds about Yildiz palace umbra- 
 geous in trees and shrubs, and tasteful in pretty 
 lakes and fountains. Photographs of these he 
 has had taken. He requested me to send, to the 
 President these pictures. This I have done. He 
 desires some of our American indigenous trees, 
 being partial to conifera, as he contemplates en- 
 larging his forest domain, to remove the reproach 
 of barrenness from the hills which overlook the 
 Bosphorus above the palaces of Beckitash and 
 Dolma Batche. To make this plan a success, the 
 omnivorous goat must go ! But as long as the 
 peasant relies on the goat for milk, he is loath to 
 let him go. 
 
 Although the Bosphorus is fifteen miles away to 
 the north from our Prinkipo home and isle, still it 
 is within my bailiwick, though not within that of 
 the police system which obtains here. Formerly 
 these nine Princes Isles were attached to the 
 
8 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 " Sixth Circle," or Prefecture of Pera the city on 
 the hill opposite Constantinople proper, or Stam- 
 boul. It was owing to the skill of Blacque Bey 
 the Prefect, or Mayor, of the "Circle" that these 
 isles improved. But recently the isles have been 
 added to the Prefecture of Ismid, whose capital, 
 at the end of the gulf of that name, is famous 
 in the annals of Bithynia, in her earlier Roman 
 and more recent Byzantine ecclesiastical history. 
 However, the rule is nearly the same as when 
 Blacque Bey was the Prefect. The government 
 is still based on the ideas of municipal rule, with 
 considerable freedom about taxation ; for the peo- 
 ple are allowed voluntarily to pay for their own 
 improvements. 
 
 The government of the isles is so much mixed 
 that it is more difficult to understand its philos- 
 ophy than autocratically to administer it. To 
 understand its combined central and local charac- 
 ter you must study its Turkish features. In the 
 old Arabic legislation municipal rule was not the 
 exception. The Ottoman did not greatly change 
 the general polity and administration of affairs 
 when Turkey was conquered from the Greeks. 
 Both systems were decentralizing. In the old 
 Greek system there was much reserved to the 
 provinces and the people of the localities " respec- 
 tively." This was the mainspring of Grecian sur- 
 vival and of Turkish continuance. One of the 
 
THEIR GOVERNMENT. g 
 
 changeless things in this country is the fixed fact 
 that, while the Greek emperors ruled there were 
 the same capitulations or privileges extended by 
 the Greeks to the Turks as the Turks now extend 
 to the Greeks and Franks. The concessions went 
 almost as far in religious matters as those of Lord 
 Baltimore and Roger Williams ; so that the Mos- 
 lem had the privilege of erecting mosques within 
 the very heart and walls of the Stamboul triangle ; 
 just as now the American Bible House and Fe- 
 male Home School, not to speak of the American 
 (Robert) College, are tolerated within its jurisdic- 
 tion. 
 
 The Sultan is, when he chooses, practically 
 absolute. He controls purse and sword. Al- 
 though the " Gotha Almanach " puts the govern- 
 ment down as a constitutional monarchy, it is so 
 in form only. There was a constitution adopted 
 on the 23d of December, 1876, under some up- 
 heaval, but it remains a dead letter. The Sheik- 
 Ul-Islam represents, the spiritual power of the 
 Caliphate. He is neither priest nor magistrate, 
 but an interpreter of the sacred Koran, which is a 
 law for the realm, except when the Sultan dis- 
 penses with the interpretation. There are titles, 
 but no nobility, no hereditary lords. " Effendi," 
 the name by which the princes and even the ''hon- 
 orable women " are called, is no more than 
 " Esquire." Other titles, such as Aga and Pasha, 
 
10 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 are only convenient handles to names like Tewfik, 
 Ali, Mustafa and Mehmet. There is a title repre- 
 senting the controlling power, by which the ad- 
 ministration is known viz., the Sublime Porte. 
 It is a locality, on or near the Seraglio Point, 
 where the Bosphorus flows into the Sea of Mar- 
 mora on one side, and the Golden Horn flows 
 into the same sea on the other But as all names 
 of places in Turkey have an inner meaning, so 
 Sublime Porte means the exalted seat of justice. 
 As the Bible tells us, justice was administered " at 
 the gate," or "porte." It was the Oriental cus- 
 tom. So that this gate is known as the gate of 
 justice par excellence ! 
 
 The empire in its grand divisions is made up of 
 vilayets. These are governed each by a Viceroy. 
 There are subordinates, like governors of counties, 
 called Mudirs, or of divisions of counties called 
 Kai'makam. The Governor of this isle of Prin- 
 kipo is a Kai'makam. Sometimes these officers, 
 especially in Christian neighborhoods, are Chris- 
 tians. Many of the Turks are descendants of 
 Christians, and one-half of the population of Tur- 
 key, which is estimated at thirty-six millions, are 
 not Turkish. The idea of the government is 
 patriarchal, whether it is practiced or not. What 
 would seem anomalous in other countries is here 
 a rule, viz., that there are governments within 
 the government. These are patriarchal, and both 
 
GREEK POLITY. j r 
 
 civil and ecclesiastical in their functions. The 
 Greek subjects in their internal affairs are ruled 
 by their own laws and magistrates. There are 
 heads to the Armenian, Hebrew, Greek and Latin 
 communities. There is a Greek nation, Ooroom 
 Milletti. It is ruled by a Council. In this the 
 laity have much control. The Patriarch is called 
 "His Holiness." With his bishops he forms a 
 Synod in religious matters. Throughout the 
 country, in every district, city and village, civil 
 relations are regulated by these councils and 
 synods, along with the ecclesiastical. The civil 
 representative may be a Turk. The Kaimakam, 
 or chief of this isle of Prinkipo, is now a Turk. 
 He used to be a Greek. You scarcely see him or 
 hear of him. He called on Admiral Franklin, 
 when he anchored here with the " Kearsarge," but 
 informed him that he had no residence, only an 
 office, on the isle. He did not expect, therefore, 
 the Admiral to return his call. I have not re- 
 ceived a call from His Excellency; but I have 
 heard from him, in an unpleasant way, when he 
 interfered with my comfort and courtesy, without 
 suspecting from my modest demeanor that I repre- 
 sented some sixty millions of free-born Americans. 
 I was cautioned against as the man with a high 
 silk hat, who was guilty of some misadventure, 
 not entirely in accord with his sense of decorum. 
 When he learned his mistake, the correction was 
 
12 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 prompt and adequate. More of that hereafter. 
 It is one of the mysteries of Asia ; and as these 
 isles are in Asia, let us not pluck out its heart too 
 suddenly. 
 
 Prinkipo, like the other eight " Isles of the 
 Princes/' has a good deal of Home Rule. It is in 
 the form of a Council, which is elected by the 
 householders. It has power, in some way, to levy 
 some of the taxes, but it takes care not to do it 
 to any great extent ; for the revenue is taken to 
 the city and becomes a common fund. This fund 
 does not always inure to the good of the island, 
 for there the taxes wherewithal to light, police 
 and improve the isles, or at least this isle of Prin- 
 kipo -are voluntary contributions by the rich folks. 
 There are taxes the old octroi levied here upon 
 donkeys and carriages. They pay for the removal 
 of the garbage and to improve the streets and 
 roads. Altogether the system is not the perfec- 
 tion of municipal home rule. There are some 
 thirty police, called zap ticks > in the town which 
 is near the shore. These keep the peace, watch 
 the scala (or quay) and shipping, and light the 
 lamps. They seldom penetrate into the interior 
 of the island, which is a dozen miles in girth. 
 
 Once in a while, when sauntering over the 
 heights of the island, or among the pines, there 
 comes on you, unexpectedly, a strange-looking man, 
 as if he were lost out of one of Ulysses's pinnaces 
 
THE ALBANIAN FORESTER. j 3 
 
 in an erratic way, or just from Albania, or had 
 been tossed out of the Cyclades by an earthquake, 
 or swam ashore by some help of the Homeric 
 gods or goddesses. He is in the old Greek cos- 
 tume, with embroidered vest, large red sash, and 
 baggy pants. As a sign of his Turkish subjection, 
 he wears the red fez. In his sash he has some 
 Damascus pistols, silver-mounted. They are as 
 handsome and as harmless as those of our Ca- 
 vass. There protrudes from the sash the jewelled 
 handle of the Damascene dirk, or yataghan. 
 There is a sword, or scimitar, by his side, and 
 altogether he appears quite voluminous at his 
 middle. He wears low shoes, adorned with silver 
 buckles. He has them turned up at the toes, and 
 high black silk stockings. His brow is corrugated 
 with care. His hair and mustache are blonde. 
 His frame is stalwart. Two dogs follow him 
 about. What is his business? To protect the 
 forest from goat, fire and spoilers. The trees must 
 not be disturbed. Fig and olive, pine and pome- 
 granate, on the road or by-paths, or over the stone 
 fences, each and all are precious. The world does 
 move ! 
 
 This elaborate forester is from the Albanian 
 mountains. He is too proud to make his avoca- 
 tion known. He is yet to arrest any one. He 
 trudges along as independently as if he were in 
 his native Croatia. He is one of the hardy race 
 
I4 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 of mountaineers which has seen much fighting. 
 He is on good terms with my Dalmatian serviteiir, 
 Pedro Sckoppegalia. I hope the forester's name 
 is not so unpronounceable as Pedro's. 
 
 Besides guarding the forest, vines and fruits of 
 the isles, these men act as private guards to houses 
 and grounds. They are good, orthodox Greek 
 Christians ; and whether as Slavs or Greeks, I sup- 
 pose they love Russia more than Turkey. There 
 are not many of them, but they give picturesque- 
 ness to the scene. 
 
 No robbers are on the isle. As some one said 
 to me : " If a robber should make a raid here, how 
 could he get off the island without being caught?" 
 The beggars are few and are easily satisfied. 
 They are a law and a police to themselves. There 
 does not seem much necessity for these guardians 
 of the vine and pine, fig and pomegranate, for few 
 people here lock their doors at night, much less 
 their garden gates. 
 
 Altogether the population seems to be happy 
 and contented. Whether it be the fisherman sit- 
 ting on the sand, mending his nets after the apos- 
 tolic method, or the little girls plucking the grapes 
 in the vineyard and figs in the orchards, or the 
 women attending their children and their washing, 
 the song ever goes up from cheerful throats and 
 well-fed stomachs. The prevalent song is Greek. 
 It has a weird, quaint melody of which I have 
 
ALBANIAN POLICE. 
 
NO NEED OF POLICE. l g 
 
 heard snatches in some comediettas at the Casino 
 in New York. 
 
 There can be little use in having much police 
 on the islands, as at nearly every point you meet 
 groups of honest people. The carriers with their 
 kegs of fresh water on their donkeys, the fruit 
 venders and foot peddlers, and the donkey-drivers 
 or parties are everywhere. Bevies of girls and 
 children are in the woods, sitting on or playing 
 among the rocks, or ensconced amidst the aromatic 
 shrubbery. There are no Naiads here. All are 
 Dryads ; for there are no fountains, only wells ; 
 and trees in plenty, where the wood nymphs cluster 
 and chatter and laugh their golden moments away. 
 Sometimes, wlfen the bands play at the restaurants, 
 or a Bohemian comes along with his hand-organ, 
 the young folks have a dance. There is much 
 provision on the isle for picnics and parties. The 
 steamer from the city, especially on Sunday, brings 
 its thousands to the isle for pastime, and they 
 make the hours fly on winged feet. 
 
 Although there are many and various people so- 
 journing on the isle some of whom are occasion- 
 ally addicted to bier de Vienne, and the horrid 
 mastic or whiskey of the country I have not seen 
 one case of drunkenness, fighting, or quarrelling. 
 The policeman, therefore, when not a gay and 
 happy forester is almost supererogatory. 
 
 The roads are in admirable repair, and fit for 
 
!6 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 the finest vehicles. Occasionally an invalid lady 
 ascends the mountain in the old sedan chair. The 
 paths up and down are for donkeys and promenad- 
 ers, who flock over the island from morning till 
 evening, in search of cool spots and al fresco din- 
 ing. Now and then these social amenities indicate 
 a church/^ or love making; for the women of 
 the isle have rare Hellenic beauty and coquettish 
 ways. Besides these promenaders, you meet fre- 
 quently the peddlers of all kinds of wares, cakes, 
 confections, fruit and water. Everything you 
 want here, from a needle to a pair of shoes, from 
 a peach to a glass of ice-cream, is brought to your 
 very hand. The water that you drink is drawn 
 from wells in the valleys on the north and south 
 sides of the isle. The proprietors own a donkey 
 drove. They fill four casks of pure cool water 
 from the deep wells, rope the casks with equipoise 
 dexterously on the donkey's back, and dispense it 
 around to the private houses and restaurants. 
 Water costs about half a piaster a keg, or two 
 cents. Some of these venders of water and things 
 are hamals. They bear great loads from the scala 
 and ferries to any part of the island. They are 
 duplicates of the stalwarts of Stamboul, who can 
 carry 600 or 700 pounds of furniture, trunks, or 
 what not up the hills and never turn a hair. 
 
 In my summer life here, I have yet to meet 
 from the people, old or young, one act or look of 
 
NO BAD BOYS. 
 
 discourtesy, or observe one Bad Boy made after 
 the similitude of Peck's. The Greek origin of the 
 people has given them graces beyond the reach of 
 art, and my summer at Prinkipo has been a revel 
 in the very heart of nature. 
 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 ISLES OF THE PRINCES THEIR GEOGRAPHY AND HIS- 
 TORICAL ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 THE map will show the relative position of the 
 isles to Prinkipo and to each other and to the 
 main land and city of Constantinople. Oxia and 
 Plati seem from the other isles like barren rocks 
 in the sea. This is one of the illusions. Proti, 
 Antigone and Halki are about of equal size. 
 They are nearest the city. Androvichi lies east 
 of Prinkipo. It has but one resident on it. You 
 may guess his occupation by the great gash he 
 has made on its western side, from whence comes 
 the marble and out of which he makes the lime for 
 transportation to the city. This isle has no culti- 
 vation, unless the smoke that ascends from his 
 lime kilns indicates an ancient cult and a pious 
 sacrifice which Homer so frequently records. 
 
 Nyandros, another island, is off the southern end 
 of Prinkipo. From the top of this latter island 
 Nyandros seems to be a part of Prinkipo, but it is 
 really two miles away. Pita is a very small islet, 
 between Halki and Antigone. It is not peopled. 
 The other islands are visited by strangers as sum- 
 
 tl8 
 
THE MONASTERY OF CHRISTOS. l ^ 
 
 mer resorts, besides having a goodly number of 
 inhabitants who live there the year round. Prin- 
 kipo, however, is the chief. It is facile firinceps. 
 The island is some ten miles around, with a rare 
 variety of mountain and intervale. 
 
 The Turkish name for Prinkipo is Buyuk-Ada, 
 or " Large Isle." This is the appellation given to 
 it by the ancient Byzantines. The history and 
 reminiscences connected with the ancient nunnery 
 established in this place, and to which the Empress 
 Irene was provisionally confined, are more or 
 less accurately given in Schlumberger's " lies des 
 Princes." Where the monastery of St. Michael's 
 now stands, on the northern side of the isle, 
 there existed in former times a large village. It 
 was called by the Byzantines " Karya." The 
 church attached to that monastery used to serve as 
 the parish church of the village. The monastery 
 now belongs to the patriarchate of the Greek 
 Church and is rented by an abbot. 
 
 The monastery of Christos is also of very an- 
 cient date. Beginning from just beyond our villa, 
 on the mountain side, its premises run down to 
 the Diaskalon or picnic grounds. The sur- 
 rounding lands belong to this monastery. Up to 
 1870 the building was a perfect mass of wooden 
 ruins, including the church. In that year the pres- 
 ent Patriarch of Alexandria, then Patriarch of 
 Constantinople, having been deposed from his bea- 
 
20 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 tific title and place, retired to Prinkipo. He set to 
 work to restore the tumbledown wooden hut which 
 served as a chapel. With the help of contribu- 
 tions from wealthy friends, the church, under the 
 personal superintendence of the ex-Patriarch, was 
 rebuilt of stone as it now stands. The monastery 
 itself was only restored last year, 1885, by the 
 present abbot, mostly at his own expense. This 
 abbot is an active and hard-working man. He 
 devotes his whole time to the cultivation of the 
 lands belonging to the monastery. He is also a 
 large wine and spirit brewer, and the products of 
 his brewery are renowned all over Constantinople 
 for their purity and excellence. 
 
 I am sure from observation and taste that the 
 wine of the isle is more plentiful and delicious 
 than the water. The latter is nearly as costly as 
 the wine. 
 
 I have been told by those who have dug on the 
 island for water that Prinkipo is somewhat different 
 from the other islands geologically and mineralog- 
 ically, and that parts of it differ from other por- 
 tions. This is accounted for, of course, by some 
 remote cataclysm. Like the other isles it has its 
 depressions and elevations. These give a curva- 
 ture to the horizon which adds many a grace. 
 Upon the tops of the mountainous portions are 
 situated Greek colleges and monasteries. These 
 give the name of " Scholastic " to Halki, and would 
 
THE DA Y BE GINS A T SUNSE T. 2 1 
 
 give that of " Pious "to Prinkipo were not Prin- 
 kipo so superb in her worldly adornments. 
 
 Halki has three seminaries of learning : two 
 Greek and one Turkish. The last is a naval 
 school. Prinkipo has three monasteries. These 
 isles, especially Halki and Prinkipo, are accessible 
 from the city of Constantinople by the Shirket 
 ferry. It leaves the bridge over the Golden Horn 
 several times a day, and makes the trip in an hour 
 and a-half. The Turk sets his clock and watch by 
 the sun. He begins his day at sunset. The time, 
 therefore, varies. This produces, until you are 
 accustomed to it, many misadventures. The pop- 
 ulation who come to these islands consult the daily 
 journals for the exact minute when the boats leave 
 the bridge at Constantinople and the quai at the 
 isles. There are two good hotels in the town of 
 Prinkipo, and these are well patronized in sum- 
 mer. Of the other isles, besides Prinkipo, I will 
 hereafter dilate at pleasure, for from Prinkipo 
 with our steam launch, which Congress was good 
 enough to vote the minister, we can take our time 
 to visit and revisit these gems of the sea. 
 
 What historic events have these isles witnessed 
 during the thousand years of Greek empire in the 
 East ? What palaces and prisons were here erected 
 for living and fallen greatness when in power or 
 banished? What did the Empress Irene in the 
 ninth century for Prinkipo, when it was at the sum- 
 
22 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 mit of its splendor ? What has become of the very 
 dust of these Grecian worthies and rulers, since 
 the conquest of Constantinople in A. D. 1453, by 
 the Moslem ? How happens it that only a few 
 old monastic relics remain upon this consecrated 
 ground ? These are questions under a veil of tra- 
 dition, if not history, which even the regeneration 
 of these lands has failed to bring fully to the light. 
 
 The tourist who travels with Murray's red-book 
 in hand will be disappointed at its meagre men- 
 tion of the Princes Isles. It gives hardly a stick- 
 ful to Halki ; and as for Prinkipo there is scarcely 
 a finger's length of matter, and that has reference to 
 the Empress Irene. That reference is all too brief, 
 for the empress was a grand figure in history at a 
 grand epoch. It hints at some spectacle of fallen 
 greatness and vanished splendor witnessed in the 
 first year of the ninth century, when Irene, the 
 contemporary of Charlemagne and Haroun-Al- 
 Raschid was banished from the throne of Byzan- 
 tium to the convent which she had built at Prin- 
 kipo. The convent remains on the north-eastern 
 side of the island, and from its lofty site sweeps a 
 splendid horizon of continent, isle and sea. 
 
 This description was provocative. I sent to 
 London and Paris, and scanned the libraries here, 
 to find a full account of the antiquities and per- 
 sonnel of this once regal isle. I heard of but 
 one volume in French, by a German, Gustave 
 
GIBBON'S PICTURE OF THE EAST. 23 
 
 Schlumberger, which would serve to elucidate the 
 spectacle. But even this volume is faulty. I doubt 
 if the writer ever visited the isles. Gibbon is 
 always near, and so I turn to his grandiose pict- 
 ure of the Eastern Empire ; but even he fails to 
 give much of interest about the empress and other 
 great personages, in their relation to our isle. In 
 his forty-eighth Chapter, he makes a rdsumd of five 
 centuries of the decline and fall, and he has eight 
 more centuries before Constantinople succumbs to 
 the Turk. He pursues its " tedious and uniform 
 state of weakness and misery." He has " cor- 
 nered " the great Roman name in the lonely sub- 
 urbs of Constantinople. " As in his daily pray- 
 ers, the Mussulman of Fez or Delhi turns his 
 face toward Mecca," so the historic eye, as he 
 phrases it, " is always fixed on Constantinople." 
 Making this prelude the historian proceeds with 
 stately step to open the prologue of swelling 
 drama in which, then as now, Latins, Greeks, Bul- 
 garians, Russians and Turks play their parts. 
 Upon this stage moves Leo IV., son of the fifth 
 Constantine. This Emperor Leo took an Athe- 
 nian orphan girl to wife. She had great personal 
 accomplishments. He was feeble ; she was not. 
 It is the old story ; she was the ruler of the Em- 
 peror, and at his death, by his will became Em- 
 press-Guardian of all the Eastern Empire. The 
 Prince, their son, Constantine VI., became her 
 
24 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 anxiety and care, next after the restoration of the 
 worship of images, of which she was the champion. 
 This image-worship was the burning question of her 
 time. Upon this question thrones were upturned 
 and synods thundered. The iconoclasts had been 
 in arms and had been successful. After many 
 trials the Prince succeeded in obtaining the throne 
 
 o 
 
 and humiliating his mother, but he was soon de- 
 throned by a counterplot of the wily Irene. She 
 had his eyes put out. She had him assassinated. 
 Ambition stifled all the good in her nature. 
 Her crimes were horrible, but not more so than the 
 crime of many other rulers at Byzantium during 
 the Greek dynasties. Putting out the eyes and 
 banishment to monasteries seem to have been the 
 favorite penalty and pastime of princes in those 
 days of unparalleled cruelty. Irene held her ill- 
 gotten power only five years. She was wont to 
 pass through Constantinople in her golden char- 
 iot, drawn by four milk-white steeds. Their reins 
 were held by patricians who had been made 
 eunuchs by her edict. These eunuchs, with the 
 cunning of that class, conspired against her. The 
 great treasurer, Nicephorus, led the conspiracy. 
 He was secretly invested with the purple and 
 crowned in St. Sophia. Irene sought a retreat 
 from her perfidious treasurer. This, her prayer, 
 was granted ; but when she requested her treasures, 
 they were refused her; for was he not a good 
 
EMPRESS IRENE AND HER TREASURER. 35 
 
 treasurer ? But he graciously allowed her to re- 
 tire honorably to the monastery of Prinkipo. 
 It seems that this was too near Byzantium for his 
 comfort, for he banished her to the Island of Les- 
 bos. There, like good Penelope, she endeavored 
 to atone for her unnatural crimes by a life of labor 
 at the distaff. With this simple implement the 
 empress, who had revelled in all the splendors of 
 the Blachernal palace, was enabled to earn a 
 scanty subsistence. 
 
 What remains of the old Byzantine civilization ? 
 Nothing but the walls, and even their eternity of 
 strength has been broken. When the spring 
 comes with its foliage, the moat around the towers 
 that once protected the great city is a vegetable 
 garden, and the blossoms of the peach, plum and 
 the pomegranate give to its grassy mound their 
 beauty and fragrance. What changes have taken 
 place ! Who can tell whether man or nature, the 
 sword or the earthquake, hath produced them ? 
 When I was in Constantinople in 1851 I saw a 
 large porphyry sarcophagus. It was once the 
 tomb of the Empress Irene, when she was buried 
 in Prinkipo. It had been converted into a water 
 tank. It was in the old hippodrome. It is no 
 longer even there. It matters not to us in Amer- 
 ica or elsewhere now, what became of her tomb or 
 of her treasurer. There may have been a Lord 
 Elgin for the removal of the one and a convenient 
 
26 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 Canada in the archipelago for the other. One 
 reign was similar with that of others. Another 
 ruler soon follows. Eye after eye is put out with 
 red hot irons ; and so on, until the Turk comes, 
 though with a scimitar yet with some clemency 
 about the year that Columbus went to seek Ca- 
 thay. 
 
 The purple robe of the Orient which enveloped 
 Constantinople, and whose resplendent fringes 
 hung over these isles, was associated with the 
 orthodox Greek religion. There was a closer 
 relation of Church and State here than the union 
 of civil and religious power at Rome. At no age, 
 or country 7 , was there ever so permanent a system 
 with so much of intrigue, cruelty, bloodshed and 
 war, as at this historic point. It is the verdict of 
 history that the incoming of the Turk was a bless- 
 ing to mankind. 
 
 In all these phases of power the monastery 
 has played a great part. Nearly all that remains 
 in these Islands of the Princes of the evidences 
 and emblems of ancient empire are these old 
 religious houses. They are not numerous, but 
 they are monuments of Greek rule, long in con- 
 tinuance, and at times resplendent in scholarship 
 and jurisprudence. The Turks were iconoclasts. 
 They spared little. Few of the images of the 
 orthojdox church escaped their spoliation. They 
 were religionists. They carne with fire and fury. 
 
A BYZANTINE SARDANAPALU$. 27 
 
 Manuscripts, pictures, statues, altars and struct- 
 ures fell before the Sultanic baton. Blindings 
 and mutilations, however, crimes so horrible as 
 to make Gibbon's page blush, no longer incarna- 
 dined the azure Bosphorus or Propontis. In 
 looking here for relics of those regal and monastic 
 eras we find few. Even the pictures which the 
 muse of history paints are but meagre, grimed 
 and almost colorless. Open a page of Gibbon. 
 Read the story of these emperors. Select one 
 whom you may call a sample. Take Manuel. 
 He was a Comnenus. In war he could not fight 
 for peace ; and in peace he was incapable of war. 
 He was an anchorite in the camp ; a Sardanapa- 
 lus in the palace. No sooner did he return from 
 the field to Constantinople than he resigned him- 
 self to the arts and pleasures of a life of luxury. 
 The expense of his dress, table and palace sur- 
 passed the measure of his predecessors. Whole 
 summer days were idly wasted on these delightful 
 isles of the Propontis, in the incestuous love of his 
 niece, Theodora gift of God, in the euphony of 
 this rich tongue. Here and there we have such 
 horrible hints as to these lovely isles, in the front 
 of history ; but in vain have I looked for the 
 grand palaces, or even their ruins, in this isle. 
 Outside of the monasteries I have found but one 
 old tower of doubtful tradition, and the founda- 
 tions of what is known as Irene's palace. The last 
 
2 g THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 are on the north side and in the vale that divides 
 the two high points of the island, a half-mile from 
 our humble villa. You will know the spot by a 
 dark-looking cave out of which much iron has 
 been extracted. It is on the left hand of the road 
 as you drive -eastward from the village. As you 
 cross the stone bridge you see the tower and the 
 wide foundations nearly hidden beneath the red 
 soil and abundant foliage. If you desire some 
 mosaics or something else archaeological take a 
 pick, and do as my neighbor, Mr. Edwin Pears, 
 author of the " Latin Conquest," has done : dig 
 away the dirt and you will be rewarded for the 
 delving. 
 
 When this palace was in the meridian of its 
 existence, and before the Turks razed all these evi- 
 dences of Greek luxury, this isle was as pictur- 
 esque as art and opulence could make it. Being in 
 sight of Constantinople, and with a climate where 
 even winter smiles, it was the resort of princes 
 and, of course, of the troop of hypocrites, parasites 
 and favorites which Walter Scott has well pictured 
 in his " Robert of Paris." 
 
 What a race the Greeks were and are ! For a 
 thousand years, and within my sight upon yonder 
 Seraglio Point, and here upon these isles of their 
 princes, they struggled and survived, after many 
 an exhaustive contest with the Barbarians of 
 the North and the Moslems of the East. Their 
 
THE IONIAN GREEKS. 2 Q 
 
 colonies were their glory. Here the Ionian chil- 
 dren of old Greece still held supreme honor. Pre- 
 cocious often, but always intellectual, they ad- 
 vanced in nearly all that modern philosophy can 
 teach ; while Athens, the eye and soul of their pol- 
 ity and art, "arose to an empire that can never 
 perish until heroism shall cease to warm, poetry to 
 delight and wisdom to instruct the future." 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 HEALTH AND OTHER ATTRACTIONS OF PRINKIPO. 
 
 THERE are 250,000 Greeks in Constantinople, 
 of whom there are 120,000 r ayahs, or Turkish 
 subjects. When Mohammed II. captured Con- 
 stantinople, as I have said, he reserved the Isles 
 of the Princes for the use of the Greeks who 
 chose to remove there. Some thousands sought 
 these isles as a residence ; their descendants yet 
 seek them as such. These residents are the 
 cream of the Greek population of the city. Their 
 features, especially the rich complexion, the 
 straight nose in a line with the symmetric brow, 
 seem copied from one model, or rather that model 
 is copied from nature. I find that model upon the 
 wall of the Greek villa of which the writer is at 
 present the occupant. It is a Minerva. It is 
 grace, dignity and wisdom in one. 
 
 Thirty years ago, just at the conclusion of the 
 Crimean war, a lady Mrs. Hornby, wife of an 
 English loan commissioner who was afterwards a 
 judge in Constantinople wrote a brief chapter in 
 her book about the delights of a farm on this 
 isle of Prinkipo. She said : " We could buy half 
 
 30 
 
WEALTH AND ELEGANCE OF PRINKIPO. 31 
 
 the island, with a garden and vineyard, for ^500, 
 and build a good comfortable house with a fire- 
 place and every comfort." Now, five million 
 pounds sterling would not buy the property of the 
 town proper, much less the splendid mansions 
 which rise and front street on street. The streets 
 are terraced from the sea up the mountain side 
 to the pine forests which crown the summits. 
 
 Upon the north-western side of Prinkipo there 
 is a little city whose villas are rare in elegance and 
 architecture, whose gardens have a hesperidean 
 fruitage and bloom, and whose red-tiled roofs over 
 the white or yellow buildings add a refinement to 
 the town and isle which the bath houses at the 
 water's edge, upon the jutting crags, themselves 
 ornamental, in vain try to dispel. The rich Greek 
 merchants and bankers, together with the English, 
 German, French, American, Armenian and Swiss 
 families, who summer here, have not only spent 
 their money freely to decorate their own homes 
 and grounds, but they have made winding roads, 
 up hill and down, which cross and encircle the 
 island. These roads are embowered most of the 
 way by fig, olive and stone-pine trees. The culti- 
 vated country is green at the opening of the 
 season with the fig bearing its fresh fruit. The 
 vines are putting forth their tender grapes. The 
 pomegranates blaze with scarlet flowers. Hun- 
 dreds, nay thousands, of people come to the isle 
 
32 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 from the city for health and recreation, attracted 
 by these parterres, mansions and pineries. They 
 often bring their provender along. 
 
 There are several extensive restaurants on 
 the island, where, upon the smoothed terraces, 
 in the open air under coniferous canopies, with 
 convenient tables and seats, there is plentiful and 
 breezy room for picnic parties. Many invalids 
 from all parts of the East are ordered here, to 
 drink in the resinous ozone, while they lie on rugs 
 under the groves which cover most of the isl- 
 and elevations. While the carriage roads are as 
 good as those of Central Park, the principal feat- 
 ure of the isle is the donkey ride. This style of 
 locomotion is quite as common here as in Egypt or 
 the Riviera. The donkeys require much prodding 
 and are not comparable with those of Egypt. 
 The company for a donkey promenade may be 
 made up of a dozen or more. It is guarded by 
 the Greek donkey man, who, whether the animals 
 go fast or slow, keeps up with the pace, and steers 
 the beast cunningly by the tail, up hill and down, 
 from the quay on the north-west to the rocky top 
 of St. George on the south-east. Upon this 
 height is a monastery of old associations, and an 
 out-door restaurant with its conveniences for rest. 
 What a prospect is here upon this point, overlook- 
 ing land and sea, reaching from San Stefano in 
 Europe to Mount Olympus in Asia ; and from the 
 
THE THIRST FOR TRAVEL. 33 
 
 north, where the Alem Dagh lifts its mountainous 
 observatory of 1460 feet for the tourist from Con- 
 stantinople to the mysterious islets of Oxia and 
 Plati, which leap out of the western sea, rock- 
 ribbed but lovely ! 
 
 The French have a proverb that a man who 
 drinks once will drink again. It applies to travel- 
 ling adventures. I began my travels to the Orient 
 in 1851. Since then, from Hammerfest, the north- 
 ernmost town in Europe, to the Atlas Mountains 
 in Africa and the Nubian Cataract of the Nile, and 
 from San Francisco west to Damascus east, I 
 have viewed many rare scenes. The^e travels 
 have been inspired by an unrest that belongs to 
 my nature, by a curiosity begotten of reading, and 
 by a romantic sentiment that defies the practical. 
 Bayard Taylor's " Views Afoot" started me to this 
 land of the Orient thirty-five years ago. But the 
 most interesting journey of my life carried me to 
 the Riviera on and along the Corniche road, and 
 from thence to Corsica, Spain and Algiers. That 
 trip was a search for " Winter Sunbeams." It was a 
 sanitary tour, under Dr. Henry Bennet's direc- 
 tion. The same prompting from an eminent 
 physician of Constantinople impelled me to this 
 isle of Prinkipo, here to summer. I had not seen 
 these isles in 1851, nor when I again visited Tur- 
 key in 1 88 1. Last summer, 1885, we made a 
 hurried visit here in the launch of an Armenian 
 3 
 
34 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 banker. He is an American citizen and flies our 
 flag, when the Kai'macam of the isle permits, over 
 a grand tower at his villa overlooking the sea. I 
 had then a glimpse, in the gloaming of the evening, 
 and in a ride behind his high-stepping bays, of the 
 rare mountains and valleys over which these roads 
 run. But I did not dream then of the affluence of 
 loveliness and sanitation which the isle possesses. 
 
 The question may, perhaps, be asked : " How 
 could you, as an officer of your country, accredited 
 near His Majesty at Yildiz, live so far from your 
 post as the island of Prinkipo, which is fifteen 
 miles away,? " 
 
 To this inquiry of the anxious tax-payer I re- 
 spond : 
 
 First: It is not so very far. I could reach the 
 Legation Office within two hours from my home 
 in Prinkipo. 
 
 Second : In the summer season, and by the in- 
 structions, I was not required to be at the Lega- 
 tion more than twice a week ; only to be in call. 
 I could go every day, as I generally did in 
 the summer, if not for business certainly for re- 
 creation. The bulk of my business is done at 
 the island, which I tried to make an agreeable re- 
 sort for all Americans who came that way. 
 
 Third : It was a health resort ; and health is in- 
 dispensable beyond all things. In the summer 
 Constantinople itself, or Pera, where the ambassa- 
 
PINE FORESTS. HEALTH. 
 
 35 
 
 dors winter, is uninhabitable by reason of its 
 stenches, dogs and heat. 
 
 Had I arranged to spend another summer at 
 Therapia, on the upper Bosphorus, with its endless 
 round of visits, I might have made many more 
 acquaintances and been more useful, perhaps, in 
 gathering information about the endless Eastern 
 imbroglio. But as health was predominant in my 
 mind, I concluded to forego all this, in order to en- 
 joy the refreshing and isolated delights of Prinkipo. 
 This the steam launch, voted by Congress, happily 
 seconded. 
 
 Among the requisites for health, and especially 
 in pulmonary and rheumatic disorders, is the res- 
 inous quality of the pine. Bishop Berkley saw 
 the poetic Star of Empire on its western way ; 
 but he made also some practical observations 
 about the use of tar-water in consumption. It is 
 an old remedy. It is one of the virtues of Prin- 
 kipo. Every breeze is laden with its essence ; 
 every pine needle distils it. Some years ago an 
 attempt was made in Germany to utilize the pine- 
 needle for making paper. It becomes apparent 
 that the workmen in the factory, who had been 
 sufferers, are by handling the fibres made well. 
 A learned doctor makes investigation. He discov- 
 ers that the tissue of the leaves of the pine is 
 composed largely of resinous and oily particles 
 with curative properties. He separates the fibres. 
 
2 6 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 He finds that they resemble cotton or wool. He 
 gives them a new utility. He weaves the wool 
 into underclothing. He establishes a health-cure 
 at Lairitz. He is hailed as a benefactor and is the 
 recipient of many medals. Out of this seeming 
 quackery cometh the pulse-warming underwear 
 which is now working its marvellous results. But, 
 as I found out for my own comfort, it is much bet- 
 ter to inhale this subtle property than to wear it 
 in flannels. And hence my sojourn at Prinkipo. 
 
 Yet for all that, it cannot be disguised that the 
 beauty of the isle and its social allurements had 
 much to do with separating our home from those 
 of the other Legations which summer on the upper 
 Bosphorus at Therapia and Buyukdere. In glanc- 
 ing over the diary of my wife, I find some para- 
 graphs which describe these attractions. At that 
 time we made the journey under the crescent flag, 
 in the hospitable launch or mouche of our host. 
 The voyage thus depictured allured us hither for 
 our second year in the Orient. Along with some 
 housewifely suggestions it will not be uninterest- 
 ing to the female reader to scan a page or two of 
 this diary : 
 
 At ten A.M. we are afloat. There is some ques- 
 tion as to the proper flag to sail under. We natu- 
 rally prefer the stars and stripes, but our Capi- 
 tano has already hoisted the crescent and the star, 
 and as our host is of the Sultan's realm, though an 
 
FIRST VISIT TO PRINKIPO. 3? 
 
 American citizen, we acquiesce. Beside, it might 
 be difficult to explain our wishes to the captain or 
 sailors, since all on board are Greeks or Arme- 
 nians except ourselves. 
 
 We leave the dock at Buyukdere and secure 
 the middle of the stream for the strongest current. 
 It is a little misty toward the opening at the Black 
 Sea, but the waters are indigo. The hills on the 
 Asian shore are seamed and scarred by quarrymen. 
 Out of their rocky sides many ribs have been 
 taken to give life to the city below and the villas 
 and palaces around. Upon the European side the 
 hills are green, in varied shades, from the orange 
 trees in the gardens at the water's edge to the 
 dark umbrella pines above upon the hills and 
 mountains. Here and there are some tints of a 
 pale green. It is a double sign, first of the Ma- 
 hometan color, and next of a Turkish barracks and 
 fort. This is Sunday and all the flags of the Le- 
 gations are flying. Jason's Mountain, tipped with 
 a minaret, has a magic look and a far-away expres- 
 sion. Are these birds, which we see flecking the 
 blue water as if a part of it ? Yes, flocks of the 
 " condemned souls," so called, which never seem 
 to alight. They fly close to the wavelets. A few 
 crows cross the stream without any noise. Some 
 gulls of various species ride like Halcyon on the 
 wave or dart down swiftly after schools of fish 
 which fret the water in dark spots. Porpoises 
 
38 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 come up and tumble back, enjoying their Sunday 
 out. These are but transient objects, and the eye 
 returns to the curving lines of beauty which the 
 hills make on either shore. We meet many 
 strange, fantastic sails the vessels full of lumber 
 from the Black Sea or fruit for the city market. 
 The palaces of white marble seem to rise out of 
 the blue water. We come to the narrowest place 
 Roumeli Hissar, with its grand old towers and 
 walls. It is a most picturesque spot. It combines 
 with sky, water and land, a well-kept cemetery of 
 the Moslems ever so unique, and antique houses 
 ever so strange, dominated by these towers of Mo- 
 hammed II., above, which are fit associates with 
 the running, clear, potential stream below. Then, 
 above all, we see the Robert College. It is 
 American, as we know. I ask a friend : 
 
 " What is that long row of twenty white houses, 
 all alike, over in Asia?" 
 
 " Warehouses for American petroleum." 
 Ah ! if they should take fire at night Edwin 
 Arnold would have to rewrite his " Light of Asia." 
 Now and then the landscape is smirched by 
 the black smoke of passing ferry steamers, which 
 ply up and down and across the Bosphorus. We 
 pass the big boats which under French, British, 
 Russian and Austrian ensigns are going out to 
 breast the waves of the Euxine on their voyages 
 to Trebizonde, the Crimea, Odessa or Varna, for 
 
MISHAP ON THE WA Y. ^ 
 
 cargoes of grain and cattle to supply the millions 
 of mouths in and about the capital. Far off, un- 
 der their guise of misty beauty, lie the mountains 
 of Asia Olympus towering with a double crown ! 
 
 The day is a choice one as to wind and water. 
 Our chat goes merrily round. The soldiers are 
 drilling at the barracks on the Straits by the sound 
 of the trumpet, the fishermen and venders of veg- 
 etables ply their trade, and the city grows dim 
 and dimmer in the distance. Now a quietude set- 
 tles over our company. Some draw out their 
 books, and others recline on the divans and lazily 
 watch the plashing waves in the wake of this little 
 dapper darling midshipmite of- the sea. 
 
 But we are nearing our island. Lovely terraces 
 and vine-clad hills greet the eye in every direction. 
 We are closing up packages and gathering shawls 
 and coats, when a sudden cessation in the ma- 
 chinery creates as sudden a surprise. " We are 
 stranded," says our Capitano. Our friend on board 
 immediately lowers the flag to half-mast, and in ten 
 minutes we see a little sail-boat bearing speedily 
 towards us. Our host had seen the mishap. We 
 are soon transferred and landed at the scala, or 
 quay, where in carriages we are rapidly driven to 
 our destination. The gravelled drive to the steps, 
 the warm greetings on the balcony and the chaffing 
 as to cold luncheons, are soon over. We settle 
 down to a most thorough enjoyment of this lovely 
 
40 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 island home. We are a party of ten, and yet 
 abundant room is found for night entertainment as 
 well as day. The grounds without are terraced to 
 the water's edge. Arbors, fountains, rustic bridges 
 and cool grottoes tempt the straying feet. A lawn- 
 tennis court is ready for its devotees. The caiques 
 lie rocking idly on the water within reach of 
 those romantically inclined. Even a small barca 
 is unloading its generous supply of oats for the 
 stables hard by at this private wharf. 
 
 The house is large and airy filled with bric-a- 
 brac of every description. I notice one peculiar- 
 ity, similar to our Southern homes ! The " cui- 
 sine " is apart from the house ; but connected there- 
 to by a bridge. 
 
 I ask the hostess, " What is it ? " 
 
 She replies : " Oh ! we call that the Bridge of 
 Sighs." 
 
 I think it is well named, if the mistress has often 
 to entertain as generously as she is doing to-day. 
 To my relief I found out afterward that there was 
 a capable housekeeper on the premises to aid our 
 lady hostess. 
 
 One thing here strikes an American as peculiar, 
 and yet it is a custom that might well be introduced 
 with us. I refer to the breakfast hour. Each 
 guest descends to the dining-room when he or 
 she may choose, or may ring for coffee in their 
 rooms. As coffee or tea, with eggs and bread, or 
 
AN AMERICAN HOME. 
 
 some kind of confiture, jelly or jam only are given, 
 it is not so difficult to serve one's guests. The 
 custom gives ease and comfort to the lazy ones, 
 and does not interfere with early risers. 
 
 A drive around the island develops more beauty 
 and shows us the most luxuriant vegetation. As 
 we are lavish in our admiration, our host seems 
 to enjoy our pleasure with us. 
 
 " And to think," says he, ''it is only four years 
 since, that I took these bare rocks in their savage 
 estate and have thus transformed them. All the 
 growth of tree and shrub is in that four years." 
 
 It is indeed marvellous. But it belongs to the 
 islands. It is entirely characteristic this lux- 
 urious growth of plants and trees of every clime. 
 
 " But," I ask our host, " where did you get this 
 beautiful finish of room and hall ? It is not of the 
 Turk Turkish ? It looks more like a home in 
 America." 
 
 tl Ah ! you are right there," he answers, " for 
 every door, window and floor was imported from 
 the United States." 
 
 Our host and hostess are citizens of the United 
 States. The orders given in the Turkish lan- 
 guage seem quite musical to the ear, for as yet I 
 have not heard much beyond street cries, which 
 do not seem melodious. 
 
 All visits must end. The pretty little three- 
 year-old son of the host prattles away ; the young 
 
42 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 maiden daughter receives our parting adieus, the 
 host and hostess are hospitable with renewed in- 
 vitations, while we can only express our thanks 
 and pleasure for all we have enjoyed. It has been 
 a day of enjoyments unique indeed. The launch 
 brings us safely to the city. Another day has 
 gone by, idling in the Orient, but one rich in 
 delight of sun and wave, sky and atmosphere, and 
 charming entertainment. As I turn my eye to 
 the East, to leave these bluest of waters and skies, 
 " I drag at each remove a lengthening chain." 
 
 #####*## 
 
 Would you know how a cosmopolitan thus in- 
 troduced to the Orient settles down into snug 
 quarters at this end of the world ? It is not diffi- 
 cult, after such an experience as the foregoing. 
 At the risk of being tedious I will tell in the next 
 chapter, in my own words, something more of our 
 domesticities. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HOME LIFE IN PRINKIPO OUR NEIGHBORS LITTLE 
 
 GREEKS FISHERMEN AND SONGS. 
 
 IF our jaded American citizens can race across 
 the continent to the Rockies and Sierras to find 
 the domes of the Yosemite and the geysers of the 
 Yellowstone, or wander amidst the Alps of Switzer- 
 land and the Highlands of Scotland, or sail over 
 the Bay of Naples and through the fiords of Nor- 
 way in search of health and change of scene 
 why may they not venture here, to these " Isles 
 of the Princes ? " They are only a fortnight 
 from New York, or four days from Paris by the 
 Oriental express railroad via Varna to Constanti- 
 nople. A day at Havre or Liverpool, a day at 
 Paris or London, another at Vienna, another at 
 glorious Buda-Pesth, a dash at Varna on the 
 Black Sea, and the next morning, at daylight, you 
 are at Cavak in the Bosphorus. A rest at Stam- 
 boul, arid in another day here you are ! in a villa 
 of your own choosing, or at a hotel where there is 
 every comfort, and where the scenery is unpar- 
 alleled and the air balmy. 
 
 Appreciating this suggestion, the American citi- 
 
 43 
 
44 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 zen, who pays for his minister abroad, will allow me 
 to make a picture of our new home at Prinkipo. 
 Already many of his compatriots of both sexes 
 have been within its sanctuary. 
 
 "Ah!" exclaims the travel-tired tourist from 
 Oregon or North Carolina " ah ! what a solace 
 and a joy to see the blessed old banner. No such 
 beautiful ensign have I seen since I left Sandy 
 Hook. God bless the stars and stripes ! It is 
 all the dearer because no longer streaming upon 
 sea or land outside of America." 
 
 Thus is the loneliness of absence from home 
 relieved by a little color, and a symbol which ever 
 recalls to us our nation's pride and honor. 
 
 Our house does not rival, nor, indeed, equal by 
 many degrees, the superb chateaux of these fair 
 demesnes, or other mansions wherewithal the isle is 
 decorated ; but for seclusion, scenic prospect and 
 proximity to the pine forests, as well as nearness 
 to Legation work, it is all that the student, the 
 doctor, or the aesthetic could desire. Half way up 
 the mountain, it faces to the sea and the north. 
 From its windows, if one could pierce the mountain 
 range of Asia Minor, there would be seen the olden 
 towers of Roumeli and Anatolia the ancient 
 warders of the Bosphorus. But who would dispense 
 with these beautiful ranges of mountains even for 
 such romantic and historical additions to the view. 
 The highest peak is about fifteen hundred feet. 
 
A TERRESTRIAL PARADISE. ,r 
 
 The range is crescent-shaped, as if emphasizing 
 the national emblem. The foot hills and open 
 vales reach to our Marmoran shore. They are 
 covered with cultivated fields from the Pendik 
 village and Phanar banks near Kadi Keui to the 
 side opposite, far across the Prinkipo channel, 
 which is here over two miles in width. What a 
 view from Stamboul and its minarets to the 
 white houses of San Stefano on the European 
 shore! The Prinkipo channel, along with the isles 
 of our small archipelago, is a lake in seeming. 
 That illusion is kept up as the sea runs south-east- 
 erly into the Gulf of Ismid, making the waters 
 appear enclosed on every side. Along these 
 shores are the remains of empire and commercial 
 greatness. 
 
 The mountains on this coast close our view. 
 But is not the sea blue here, and the bays and 
 harbors charming enough, without seeking to unroll 
 the endless panorama of land and sea, city and coun- 
 try, towers and mosques, mountains and clouds, 
 which this terrestrial paradise furnishes to the en- 
 chanted eye? Within a mile from our eyrie of 
 observation we can view the waves shimmering in 
 the morning sun and snowy sea birds riding on 
 the deep blue waves. Then the Asian mountains 
 are meshed at dawn in an airy web of many 
 hues ; at noon, behold them radiant in celestial 
 light ; and at eve, see the glow upon them from 
 
46 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 the west is one unclouded blaze of roseate and im- 
 purpled living light ! 
 
 I forget our household ! One cannot live upon 
 the whip-syllabub of descriptive scenery, however 
 entrancing the view may be. 
 
 We found a villa ready to be rented to one who 
 could "house-keep" it neatly. We wei approved 
 as apparently the proper tenants by the owner, an 
 elderly Greek lady of refinement and courtesy. She 
 lets her villa to us as she is about to depart for the 
 summer, to visit relatives in Athens. She leaves 
 it as tidy as any New England dame could wish. 
 In fact, as we alight at her gates about five o'clock 
 in the afternoon they seem to fly open magically, 
 and as we cross the threshold what a charming 
 picture is presented by the little dining-table 
 already prepared for its hungry guests, with its 
 hot, steaming soups, and ttageres and vases all 
 redolent of flowers, spice and fragrance. 
 
 But how can the masculine pen describe the 
 inner sanctuary of a home ? I call to aid the new 
 house-keeper and from her house-book quote 
 under protest : 
 
 I said to a friend: " Is this a Greek house?" 
 
 " Oh, I do not know that you would call it that 
 exactly ; it is a house of the country." 
 
 Let me then describe this " house of the coun- 
 try " : The tall stone walls and iron grating com- 
 pose the barrier and gateway. They are deco- 
 
A HOUSE OF THE COUNTRY. 47 
 
 rated with huge pots of hydrangea, in full bloom. 
 The bell-knob hangs at this outer gate. You 
 enter a tessellated plaza before the house. This 
 admits you to the lower rooms, which are the 
 servants' quarters. As the house stands on the side- 
 hill, to find the front entrance you turn to the 
 right and ascend the white marble steps. These 
 steps are kept immaculate by Michealis, our 
 bright factotum. Here the high portico offers the 
 main entrance. A summer arbor covered with 
 that house-decorating plant, the wistaria, reminds 
 us of home, and graces the terrace. Above it 
 waves our own red, white and blue bunting, for 
 which Admiral Woods Pasha, a neighbor, has 
 already kindly provided a lofty staff. Some sym- 
 metrical fir-trees, a fountain with gold-fishes play- 
 ing in the basin, and the garden in miniature, com- 
 plete the terrace of the entrance. The black and 
 white pebble-stones set on edge after the Pompeian 
 manner, form fanciful designs of flower and foliage 
 in the pavement which extends around the house. 
 The tessellated walks remind us of the harem 
 gardens of Cairo and the deserted earthquaken 
 streets of Chios. A huge catalpa and a drooping 
 willow adorn the kitchen court. The steps to the 
 upper terraces are lined with fuchsia, geranium, 
 snow-white jasmine, verbena and other gay flower- 
 ing plants, while the terraces are fringed with 
 lemon and orange trees, whose golden fruit would 
 
4 8 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 have tempted Adam as well as Eve. It is quite 
 beautiful to see the fruit and flowers at the same 
 time upon these trees. They give present odor 
 and promise for the future, even though we may 
 not be the happy recipients of their favors. 
 
 Enter the house and you are at once in a large 
 square hall. This serves in summer-time as the 
 general social room of the family. On the left 
 and right are four large rooms. In some of the 
 more palatial houses of the isle the entrance- 
 hall includes two such end rooms, thus making 
 one large airy apartment. Upon the ground 
 floor we find a library and dining-room, both 
 green and beautiful with foliage and flower. 
 Folding glass doors at the end of the hall may be 
 closed for winter or left open for summer. In 
 either case, they reveal the stairway which leads 
 to an equally open and airy hall above, supplied 
 with wide divans in addition to other furnishings. 
 The bow-window here extends over the portico. 
 It makes an exceedingly attractive lounging 
 or smoking room. In the cities of the East it 
 is the practice to build this bow-window projecting 
 over the street below, and at four or five o'clock 
 in the afternoon, it is always occupied by a merry 
 group taking tea, sweets, fruit, or Turkish coffee. 
 Here they receive visitors or survey the outside 
 world of gay promenaders, and make laughing 
 comments on all that meets the eye. 
 
VEGETABLE VENDERS. ^ 
 
 We are happy in finding our island home far 
 up in the pure, dry air of the mountain amidst the 
 forests of pine. Every room has the indispensa- 
 ble divan ; and from the windows we have the ever 
 lovely views of the Sea of Marmora and the Asian 
 land, with their never tiring and ever changing 
 phases. Even now, at the outset of our experi- 
 ence, we have oranges, figs, and many vegetables 
 from the gardens above, which are included in our 
 leasehold. 
 
 It is amusing to hear the juvenile street venders 
 call out in their long drawling falsetto some of 
 these vegetables. The simple word bamia, be- 
 comes ba-ha-mi-a-a-ah ! This vegetable is a nov- 
 elty to us. It is not among our American prod- 
 ucts ; but it proves to be relishable. All vegeta- 
 bles and goods are " cried " before sold. They 
 come to your door on the numerous donkeys that 
 throng the island, or on the backs of the peddlers 
 who carry great show-cases of their wares. The 
 cries of the venders are monotonous, but they are 
 often varied by the recitation of some blind strolling 
 beggar. The latter goes his customary rounds 
 and enlivens the intense quietude of our surround- 
 ings by his plaintive appeal, in some verse of the 
 Koran inculcating charity. I must say that he 
 merits some reward, if it is only for his forbear- 
 ance to ring the area-bell, with which our street 
 mendicants of New York are all too familiar. 
 
50 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 Our gardener comes to us daily with his floral 
 offering for the table. There is always efflores- 
 cence enough for change and variety. This morn- 
 ing, for instance, Xenophon's bouquet consists of 
 the snow-white, sweet-scented jasmine. He looks 
 quite pleased when I compliment its beauty and 
 his taste. I ask to see his manner of arranging 
 the flowers. He has cut a pine branch with its 
 needles, and each tiny blossom is strung on each 
 needle point, thus saving the ravages of the scis- 
 sors on the plant, and making a neat cluster 
 bouquet in quicker time than our laborious gar- 
 deners with their broom-stick stems could rival. 
 
 Thus far you have been favored with a glance 
 into the diary of the newly inaugurated mistress 
 of the house. 
 
 It may be interesting to know upon what we 
 Greco-Americans subsist for food. Our milk and 
 butter come cheaply enough. They come across 
 the channel from Asia, from the fine farms upon 
 the slopes of the distant mountains. These farms 
 are in sight. They are rich in fruit as well as in 
 kine. We were told that we should find one treas- 
 ure in our Greek home a goat. For awhile we 
 tried our domestic sheep's and goats' milk. Bah ! 
 There is nothing like the original cow. There 
 lies before me, in the shape of a foot-long pine 
 stick, our milk account ! It is marked with many 
 
ORIENTAL BOOK-KEEPING. $ l 
 
 notches. On it my wife has written " 56 oks." 
 An ok is about two and a-half pounds, or in liquid 
 about a quart. The month's account is on the 
 stick. This is not an original plan of keeping ac- 
 counts. It is aboriginal in many lands. It struck 
 us as convenient and honest ; and when rendered, 
 there was no need of calling in arbitration. The 
 amount due at the end of the month was summed 
 up in notches and piasters. 
 
 The caiques, which whiten with their sails our 
 lake-like sea, bring to our docks the finest melons 
 of every variety. Among them is our nutmeg ; 
 but the best is the cassova. Its color within is 
 golden and its meat honey, with a dash of musk 
 and spice. Grapes soon begin to adorn Our table. 
 They are of various kinds ; but there is one peer- 
 less kind. No fruit has ever been grown upon 
 other parts of the earth equal to the fruit which 
 September welcomes here, chief of which is the 
 grape known as tchaouch uzum. While Europe 
 and America may excel in pears, apples and plums, 
 Asia has the most delicious fruit of royal clusters. 
 The tchaouch is of pure gold and of plum-like size 
 and rotundity. Its very pronunciation makes the 
 mouth moisten. The hills around Tcham Lidja, 
 where these grapes grow, are the Mecca of 
 crowds of the lovers of this Bacchanalian fruit. 
 Here the harem makes its visit, breakfasting on 
 these grapes and bread. Sometimes this exquisite 
 
52 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 fruit is dried for winter use, but generally it is too 
 rich to be spoiled in that way. Amber is not more 
 beautiful in color. The cluster is very large and 
 weighty. It seems bursting with a. fruity bloom 
 and gives such aroma and flavor that the bees fol- 
 low it into the very penetralia of our salle a man- 
 ger. This luscious vintage inspires poetic fancies, 
 even before it is trodden in the wine-press 
 
 " Less fragrant scents the unfolding rose exhales." 
 
 Peaches, plums, apricots and nectarines make up 
 a picture for the table as well as a feast for the 
 epicure. For meats, we have lamb and mutton, 
 beef and chickens ; for vegetables, there are varie- 
 ties not known to the cuisine of the West, among 
 which is the damia, only not our bean, but more 
 unctuous and toothsome than the marrow-fat pea. 
 What could we wish for beside ? Fish ? Yes, the 
 Propontis is the resting-place of the " fishy Bos- 
 phorus," as it was called in ancient days. It is the 
 home of the fish called the mullet, as well also of 
 the turbot and the mackerel, and a dainty, shining, 
 nameless little beauty, quite delicate even without 
 sauce. These disportively abound. The fishing 
 with hook and line is spoiled by the nets which one 
 sees actively employed at all hours, and wherever the 
 shelving, pebbly shores and eddies invite. Indeed, 
 the isles are surrounded with fishers' nets. You 
 may see their high poles standing in the bays, and 
 

 PEDDLER OF MEATS. 
 
THE 'TALLIEN FISH TOWERS. ^ 
 
 a platform or lookout attached, where a fisherman 
 watches for the schools late into the night. These 
 nets are placed so as to catch the current, and as 
 the water is clear it is easy for the experienced 
 eye of the watchman to see when the fish enter the 
 net. He then pulls the string and the finny fel- 
 lows are entrapped. These platforms, or watch- 
 towers, are seen on the upper Bosphorus as well 
 as here. They are called "Talliens." This is a 
 corruption of the word " Italians," as that race 
 were the first fishermen here to use this peculiar 
 tower of observation. 
 
 We often fish in another mode, in company with 
 these Zebedees. When the caique is sufficiently 
 far out from shore, they throw out one end of the 
 net, this end being buoyed up by a cork or gourd; 
 and then, after the boat has described a circle, they 
 throw quantities of stones into the water within 
 it, stones which they always carry in the boat for 
 this purpose. These startle the fish from their 
 quiet depths, and drive them swimming hither and 
 thither, and thus they are more than likely to be 
 ensnared. Fish, like our milk, meats and vege- 
 tables, are brought to our door, and are less costly 
 than in America. 
 
 From the fishermen of Judea the world has 
 learned much. The Greek fishers who convey 
 us about these isles are not picturesque, nor statu- 
 esque, but they are Hellenic in many ways, and 
 
54 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 chiefly in their worship of the waters. As they sit 
 on the sandy beaches carolling their weird songs 
 and mending their nets, they bring to memory the 
 apostolic employment. They are both classic 
 and biblical. 
 
 What boatmen, what fishermen, what male 
 nereides these Greeks are ! How deftly they ply 
 the oar ! how neatly they untie a string or fix a 
 hook ! with what taste they arrange the fish when 
 caught ! For example : " I go afishing " with old 
 Nicholi on the east side of the island ; we catch 
 about fifty of all kinds, including some rouget. 
 These rougets are dainties fit for Lucullus. They 
 are worth, in the parlance here, twenty-five piasters 
 per ok. A piaster is nearly five cents and an ok 
 between two and three pounds. In arranging them 
 in the basket, Nicholi turns up their heads and lays 
 out their tails, so as to make gold and silver radii. 
 The big shiny fish are the centre, they form the 
 hub. Then with a stick he strips the scales from 
 the rouget. The rouget immediately blushes a 
 rich crimson, at the indignity of this disrobing. 
 Then he arranges the colors so as to make every 
 other spoke in the radiant " mess " fiery with the 
 red hue. Is this the result of that inborn love for 
 the beautiful which is Grecian ? 
 
 When the army of Xenophon on its famous re- 
 treat reached these very waters, their inborn love 
 of Neptune's element burst forth in shouts of joy 
 
THE TWO XENOPHONS. ^ 
 
 -" Thalassa ! Thalassa ! "The sea ! The sea ! I 
 get this not from Xenophon my gardener, but from 
 old Anabasis himself, who reposes on the shelf of 
 the library. 
 
 The Greeks still love the sea. Not to speak of 
 pirates who used to infest the archipelago, one 
 need only look at the inimitable big sailing ships 
 which plough toward the Euxine, after their own 
 peculiar golden fleece, which is horned cattle and 
 grain from Russia, to appreciate their spirit of 
 marine adventure. With their isles and coast lines 
 how could they do otherwise than love the water ? 
 
 They had fountains which were sacred to their 
 genii. Was not Arethusa the nymph who, when 
 chased by her lover, turned into a fountain ? 
 Diana changed her, chaste goddess that she was ! 
 Water was ever sacred to her. It is the emblem 
 of purity in the East. The rivers of the earth are 
 the children of Oceanus and his sister, besides 
 having three thousand oceanides little ones of 
 the sea. Mauray must have descended from the 
 Greeks of Maronia, to have discerned the thou- 
 sand streams and currents in the bosom of the deep. 
 When Peleus would dedicate a lock of Achilles' 
 hair, he bore it to the river Sporcheios. Peleus 
 was a relative of Neptune and the father of the 
 irascible hero of Homer. The Pulians sacrificed a 
 bull to Alpheios, which was a river of Peloponnesus. 
 It had a knack of running under ground, very 
 
tj 6 TflE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 near the scenes of classic Olympus. It excited 
 mystery and devotion. Spenser, in his " Faerie 
 Queen," makes some rare stanzas about a congre- 
 gation of the rivers of Britain. He copies the pict- 
 ure from Themis, the goddess of law and justice 
 the first personification of a virtue who summoned 
 the streams of Greece to a great Olympian Legis- 
 lature I suppose, for improvement and appropri- 
 ations. Oceanus and the fountains were regarded 
 as divinities. How much the people of a dry 
 land like Greece must have appreciated streams ! 
 Mr. Gladstone in his "Juventus Mundi," regarded 
 this water worship of the Greek as coming from a 
 different race; but Sir John Lubbock, who is bet- 
 ter authority on this point than Gladstone, says 
 that this water worship was only an earlier stage 
 of the development of Grecian mythology. 
 
 The question is likely to occur to the reader : 
 " How do you get along with your household 
 and neighbors as to language ? Do you speak 
 ancient Greek, and will that answer for modern 
 uses ?" 
 
 Let me rise to a personal explanation. Mr. 
 Speaker ! Ah ! Oh ! I beg pardon, Ladies and 
 gentlemen : 
 
 There are two kinds of language spoken by the 
 modern Greek. One is called the Nooheknia. 
 It is the regeneration of the ancient language, and 
 is said to be the more classical and elegant of the 
 
MODERN AND ANCIENT GREEK. ^ 
 
 two. It is called " regenerated" because it differs 
 from the other Romaic. The regeneration of 
 this language is supposed, in part, to be the elim- 
 ination of all Turkish words and phrases. As a 
 vehicle of thought it is growing rapidly ; but it is 
 very unlike the ancient Greek, except in its printed 
 form. It is more or less tinctured with the French 
 in .its modes of expression. Hearing it spoken in 
 the theatre at Constantinople, I have been struck 
 with its vivacious turns of expression. That it 
 is capable of great eloquence, tenderness and 
 music I do not doubt. In the provinces where 
 Greek is spoken it is said to be very difficult for 
 the peasants to understand a Greek newspaper; 
 while in Athens among the dlite, the most 
 ordinary word familiar to the provinces is unintel- 
 ligible. It is said by one who is conversant with 
 these dialects that the younger Athenians of to- 
 day would have greater difficulty in communi- 
 cating with the Greek peasants or fishermen in 
 Turkey, or even in Greece, than with foreigners 
 possessing a superficial knowledge acquired in the 
 mountain districts. 
 
 Judging by certain plays which I have seen per- 
 formed in the modern Greek language, I think 
 the sense of pathos is more predominant in that 
 language than humor, although there is a close 
 alliance between the two. As one not unobserv- 
 ant of humor, I may be allowed to say that the 
 
^g THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 Greek has it, but not in the refinement, which is 
 one of the last or highest reaches of civilization. 
 The Greeks are not wanting in broad fun. There 
 is much amusement in their ballads. They have 
 a quickness or vivacity somewhat like the French 
 or Irish, which is the spirit of witty retort ; but of 
 that kind of humor or wit which sees the incon- 
 gruity of things there is not much trace in their 
 nature. This may be accounted for by the condi- 
 tion of the people, living as they do in a state of 
 insecurity, and their experiences tending toward 
 the lugubrious. And yet, like the Irish, the Greeks, 
 with all their disappointments and oppressions, are 
 not wanting in a sense of that liveliness which is 
 the source as well of poetry as of humor. Their 
 every-day language bears the same relation to the 
 written modern Greek language as the Saxon did 
 to the Norman, or the Turkish to the Arabic. As 
 for understanding the special Greek/tftoV of these 
 isles, we do not dare to begin its study. A few 
 words of daily use at the table or about the house 
 are all that we need, as our own servants, 
 Pedro, the Dalmatian Slav, and Marie, the Arme- 
 nian maid, both speak the modern Greek in its 
 simplicity, as well as the Turkish language. 
 
 Who and what are our neighbors ? They live 
 along the road and up the mountain side. They 
 too are Greeks. All make courtesy to us. From 
 the day we enter our green-grilled gate to the pres- 
 
LOCAL COUR TES Y IN GREE TINGS. c g 
 
 ent writing, there is the uniform bow and salutation, 
 " Kale mare ! " Good day ! or " Kale spero ! " Good 
 evening ! It is pleasant to receive salutation from 
 the children. It puts one's politeness to its best 
 vigilance, as the children are plentiful. Our three 
 nearest households have between them eighteen ! 
 Had I come to Prinkipo when younger, say 
 three decades ago, nothing but my sex could have 
 stopped my maternal instincts. The isle is cele- 
 brated in that respect. These little Greeks bear 
 grand classic names. Let them be perpetuated. 
 Some few have ecclesiastical names, but the classics 
 are in the majority. If I had to canvass Prinkipo 
 for Congress, I would first cultivate the classics, 
 then orthodoxy. For every Michael there are two 
 Herodotuses ; for every Antonio, two Lycurguses ; 
 for every Nicholas, two Pisistratuses. The Marys 
 are plentiful, but the Helens are more so. 
 The equivocal reputation of Aspasia has not pre- 
 vented many namesakes. Our femme de chambre 
 is called Theano ! One of the fishermen is called 
 Phaon, from that jolly mariner or ferryman of 
 Lesbos, with whom Sappho fell in love before she 
 fell into the sea. How sad ! Her love was unre- 
 quited. Our gardener rejoices in the name Xeno- 
 phon. He is neither historian nor philosopher, and 
 he never heard of Socrates. In fact, he had never 
 heard of his own great namesake. My wife said to 
 him one day : " Did you ever hear of your an- 
 
60 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 cestor Xenophon, who was not only a handsome 
 soldier but a great writer many hundred years 
 before Christ ? " 
 
 He smiles, ponders a little and .with a slight 
 play of fancy, as if he thought the madame were 
 humorous, says : " I know no such man ; but I 
 know Xennie, who carries water to our garden." 
 And this was the nickname for the pupil of Soc- 
 rates, the historian, and soul of the Anabasis ! 
 This is the pet name of the hero who twenty-three 
 hundred years before, had visited Byzantium, after 
 his famous retreat over rough lands for fifteen 
 months, making 1155 parasangs. In one thing our 
 gardener resembles his namesake. He has that 
 simplicity of style which was the relief of my cal- 
 low college days, and an integrity of character 
 worthy of Socratic teaching. 
 
 One does not enjoy his beef less because his 
 butcher is called Pausanius, or his beans more 
 because his gardener is called Xenophon. Nor do 
 we enjoy our ice-cream, fruits, music, or the little 
 courtesies of the isle the less, because they come 
 to us upon the hills of Prinkipo tendered by An- 
 astasia and Euphrosyne ; or depreciate our pur- 
 chases because Demetrius and Theodosius stand 
 sponsor for the wares which they peddle along 
 the highways of the isle. Our cook is named Kat- 
 arina. Is it a German name? No: it is Greek. 
 She has been cook in the family from whom we 
 
ICE-CREAM PEDDLER. 
 
GREEK RELICS. 
 
 rent for thirty years. They call her Amty, which 
 is modern Greek, I suppose, for " Aunty." Thus 
 our South is reproduced with its nomenclature. 
 Of the children who play around our house in the 
 alley above and in the valley below, you may read 
 their names in the Odyssey or in Mitford ; or, call 
 the roll of the Amphictyonic Congress, and they 
 will not be absent, like so many of our American 
 Solons, when their names are called. 
 
 While musing upon the various names which 
 are rich in classic and historic lore, I pick up a 
 volume which is a part of my diversion occasion- 
 ally. It is that of a literary tourist, travelling in 
 the neighborhood of Athens. He is repeating, of 
 course, some of Childe Harold's exclamations 
 about " Fair Greece ! " sad relic of departed 
 worth, immortal, though no more ! when he is 
 tapped familiarly on the back by a so-called son 
 of modern Athens, very likely a composite of Dal- 
 matian, Saracen, German, French and Italian. 
 This Athenian speaks to him in the vilest French. 
 He points out, at the entrance of the harbor of 
 the Piraeus, the tomb of Themistocles, saying: 
 " Voila! the tomb of our greatest man!" The 
 tourist thanks him, and asks him for his card. 
 
 " I am," said he, Miltiades." 
 
 The tourist starts back. 
 
 " What ! " 
 
 The stranger smiles a savage grin and says : 
 
62 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 " At your service." 
 
 "Who are you?" I inquire. 
 
 11 A laquais de place" he replies. 
 
 " Is it possible ! the hero of Marathon so re- 
 duced ! " 
 
 Oh !" says he, " I knew them all." 
 
 " Who all?" I ask. 
 
 " Those poor gentlemen of Marathon." 
 
 He confesses this tourist that his dream of 
 Grecian beauty and greatness is over ; but that 
 is the hard English way of looking at the world. 
 
 The sports of children are typical of their lives. 
 Even bankers' sons fly many-colored kites, and 
 fly them skilfully, as their fathers do on the 
 bourses of Europe. The little urchins in our 
 vicinity are histrionically inclined inchoate Sopho- 
 cleses and ^Eschyluses. They play house-keeping 
 and horse, and occasionally have a Greek funeral, 
 with priest, corpse and pall-bearers. They show 
 their classic heredity, for they are running over 
 with dramatic mimicry. 
 
 The other day the children were much excited. 
 They gathered on the hill side in front of our 
 house, and began to clear away the pine needles 
 and cones to make a smooth floor for a restaurant, 
 or Diaskalon. Ropes were extended, upon which 
 hung from the trees in colored papers the flags of 
 the different nations. 
 
BLESSING THE GRAPE. 5^ 
 
 u What are they doing?" we inquire of our 
 domestics. 
 
 " Oh, Excellency, it is a fete day among the 
 Orthodox." 
 
 The children had caught the contagion. They 
 are copying the caffantes on the mountains, 
 whither to-day streams of pious Greeks are 
 wending. 
 
 "Why this fete?" we ask. 
 
 " Excellency, it is the beginning of the grape 
 season." 
 
 The people of the isle gather at the monastery 
 and church of Christos, above, where the good 
 Papa has baskets of the succulent vintage, in rich 
 golden and purple clusters. These are blessed, 
 and each person comes up to the altar and re- 
 ceives one of the blessed bunches. 
 
 Is this one of the Pagan rites which the ortho- 
 dox Greek covers with a thin veneering of Chris- 
 tianity ? If so, is it so very bad to be a little 
 Paganistic ? Indeed, it savors of the " first good 
 and first fair," and deserves to be celebrated ; as 
 much so as our Thanksgiving, with its turkey roast 
 and pumpkin rites. 
 
 Between our point of view at the villa and the sea, 
 there is nothing to interrupt the vision. We over- 
 look the eastern end of the elder village by the 
 shore. Immediately on the east is a Swiss valley. 
 It is Swiss in its depth and picturesqueness. In 
 
64 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 its' hollow are a few cottages, and on its sides some 
 villas. This vale is a mile long, and runs up 
 to the middle depression of the island. It is 
 covered by a vineyard, interspersed with fig-trees 
 now bearing fruit; and rich in their large fresh 
 green leaves. Olive trees here and there silver 
 the scene, and mingle with the few stately 
 cypresses, once marking tombs which are now lost 
 in the cultivation and changes of the soil. 
 
 Out of this valley there comes tripping a little 
 fairy of the vineyard and fig-tree. She is singing 
 a song whose evanescent music, with its quavers 
 and turns, none but a Greek girl can master. 
 Her mother is a donkey proprietress, and she 
 allows her pet to salute our flag and its interterri- 
 toriality with her favorite roundelay. 
 
 This little one is my nearest neighbor. 
 When I walk up through the groves and take my 
 place, with a book, upon the circular stone seat 
 under the umbrage of the pine trees, " midway up 
 the mount," I hear her voice from the valley 
 gradually nearing, until that voice becomes em- 
 bodied, as she stands half panting with her race up 
 the acclivity, yet trilling her " Pipini " roundelay ! 
 I insert a translation and notation of this popular 
 song and its melody ; * but the donkey queen will 
 not allow me to transport to a New Atlantis her 
 little Prinkipo princess. 
 
 * See pages 66 and 67. 
 
GREEK FOLK LORE. 
 
 It is very touching to see how, from lip to lip, 
 simple verses like these will awaken a whole pop- 
 ulation to the influences of music in its quick anfl 
 vivacious expression. With the simplicity of a 
 primeval ballad, the " Mother Goose " melody con- 
 quers all tongues and hearts. 
 
 Another of these peculiar melodies or poems re- 
 minds me of the ballads which are sung in the 
 nursery. I cannot translate it, for I do not under- 
 stand the original. 
 
 The burden of the song is about an old man 
 who keeps a cock, which wakes the lonely old man. 
 A fox comes by and wakes the cock which waked 
 the lonely old man. Then a dog comes along; it 
 killed the fox that ate the cock that crowed and 
 waked the lonely old man. And so on, until the 
 log falls down and kills the dog, and the furnace 
 burns the log, and a river quenches the furnace, 
 and an ox drinks up the river, and a wolf eats the 
 ox, and a shepherd kills the wolf, and at last the 
 plague carries off the shepherd who killed the wolf, 
 that ate the ox, that drank up the river, that 
 quenched the furnace, that burned the log, that 
 killed the dog, that ate the fox, that ate the cock, 
 that crowed and waked the lonely old man ! 
 Something after this manner is not unfamiliar 
 to the little ones of all lands. 
 
 There is a folk lore among the Greek peasantry, 
 
 which has its moralities, and this is assimilated in 
 
 s 
 
66 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 THE BIRD SONG. 
 ct T6 native." 
 
 The little bird that I loved, that I still adore- 
 Little birdie, my darling ; 
 For thee, birdie, I'm sighing. 
 
 The little dear bird has fled and will return no more 
 Come back, birdie, my darling, 
 Oh ! where are you flying ? 
 
 Oh ! cruel birdie ! Oh ! come back, before it is too late. 
 
 Little birdie, my dear ; 
 
 My prayer won't you hear? 
 Return, my pretty bird, to me, seek not a better fate ; 
 
 Come back, birdie, my dear, 
 
 For thy fate I fear ! 
 
 You have, birdie, my heart ; it has for long been thine, 
 Birdie, my heart you carry: 
 To come back, oh ! do not tarry. 
 
 Return me, birdie, thine heart and come to nestle in 
 
 mine. 
 
 Come back, birdie, come back, darling, 
 For thee, birdie, I'm sighing. 
 
THE BIRD SONG. 
 tc To 77flriw." 
 
 
 
 m 
 
 :tfc=J=t* 
 
 
 =Ef 
 
 .pr .. r ff F^*- ~ (* -. ~f ~<* > ~~n~'i* y \~f i* ^ P g 
 
 
 
 67 
 
68 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 \ 
 
 many ways with that of the Orient. Of course it 
 is more or less influenced by magic, and hence it is 
 Persian, or Arabic. It has in it a whole circus of 
 interjected horses, and bevies of maidens in wilder- 
 nesses or in shipwrecks. It is full of wicked sub- 
 ject matters, but everywhere it is replete with 
 the marvellous. The myths of ancient Greece 
 or the Sagas of Norseland are not more pene- 
 trated with the supernatural than are the bal- 
 lads and fables in the modern Greek language. 
 Many of these fables and stories are the same 
 which we hear repeated in our own tongue. They 
 are, in other forms, the substance of Uncle Remus' 
 stories of the fauna of our own woods ; and these 
 stories have an Oriental flavor, which came to the 
 original Guinea or Congo slave when the religion 
 of Mahomet spread through the Dark Continent 
 to these unhappy exiles of our ante-revolutionary 
 years. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 PRINKIPO ITS GARDENS AND VILLAS. 
 
 How is the island watered ? For so fruitful a 
 spot, it must have water. There is some dew, 
 and that refreshes the vines, which are in great 
 abundance. The vine does not seem to need 
 showers, for in summer there are none worth not- 
 ing. Wells of water are dug, and the Egyptian 
 mode of pumping by ox, horse or man power is 
 resorted to in the best places. On the east and 
 west sides, where the isle is lowest and the 
 gardens of melons and vegetables are many, the 
 water is drawn by hand. We start with full cis- 
 terns, but these do not hold out long, and we are 
 soon obliged to join the numberless households 
 around us who live by this locomotive irrigation. 
 Twice a day the picturesque scene presents itself 
 at our garden gate Antonius and his four pet 
 donkey companions, with their surroundings and 
 not unmusical voices. The gold-fishes must live 
 .in the fountain and the flowers must flourish on 
 the terraces. Ergo, the cistern and fountain must 
 be supplied. And Xenophon, like his great name- 
 sake, must work on a great scale, and so, with 
 
 69 
 
JQ THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 lavish hand he distributes to his cherished wards 
 that which costs him nothing and which gives them 
 beauty and fragrance. 
 
 But where are the beautiful lawns of other 
 lands ? Where the fresh green grass to cool the 
 hot air and relieve the eye ? These are not. The 
 grass will not grow at all on this island. Under 
 the pine trees the needles are so thickly strewn 
 that they pave the ground and make the walks 
 quite slippery. The shrubbery is of a larger vari- 
 ety than elsewhere. It reminds me of the fragrant 
 machieoi Corsica, of which Napoleon said, that he 
 <( could shut his eyes and smell it," when he was a 
 prisoner in far off St. Helena. Nearly all of the 
 islands are covered by this shrubbery, where the 
 trees and rocks permit. It is a sort of heather. 
 I see the women and men folk gathering it for 
 "yarbes," as its roots are medicinal. 
 
 There is a quasi grass grown here, perhaps quite 
 as pretty as our grass. It is called Lepia. 
 Whether this is the right spelling or not, I do not 
 know. Whether it be derived from lepits, a hare, 
 which feeds on it ; or lepas, a shell-fish ; or lepidics, 
 pleasant it makes no difference, so long as 
 it makes a pleasant lawn, whether for rabbit or 
 barnacle. It is very petite and delicate, and of a 
 pinkish white in color. Upon its tiny petals 
 the bees and other honey-suckers buzz all day 
 long. Butterflies of gorgeous hues and large size 
 
WATER-CARRIERS. 
 
A FAMOUS EPICAL GARDEN. ^ 
 
 vie with the tiny humming-birds of purple tint 
 which invade our garden. This quasi grass can 
 be shaven, and then it makes a pleasant lawn, but 
 in so doing the little fragrant flower must fall with 
 the gardener's knife for awhile, until the new blos- 
 soms come again. It forms a very attractive 
 addition to the parterres of these island homes. 
 
 Our villa is a miniature compared with the su- 
 perb villas which line the lofty terraces by the sea- 
 shore, and within whose enclosures the tamarind, 
 magnolia and oleander flourish. The best houses 
 are roofed with red tiles. They are gay with ve- 
 randas and covered with creepers. They are either 
 pink, white or yellow with fresh paint. Every- 
 where embowered, they make pictures worthy of 
 the Greek gardens of Antinous. 
 
 It is neither pedantry nor exaggeration to com- 
 pare these island villas to the classic garden of 
 Homer's Alcinous in the Phseacian Isle (Corfu), 
 where that "much experienced," wise old man, 
 Ulysses, was harbored for a season. To be prosy, 
 let me make an inventory of that famous epical 
 garden : It has four acres , edged with green, and 
 tall trees, cypresses, we suppose. There are red- 
 dening apples, ripening to gold ; blue, luscious 
 figs ; red pomegranates ; heavy pears, and perenni- 
 ally verdant olives. Whenever one fruit drops, 
 another takes its place. The seasons are so mild 
 that blooms, buds and fruit appear together. The 
 
72 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 vines are ranked in order, some fit to pluck, some 
 to make raisins, and some for wine. While some 
 are in flower, others are in grape. Some are just 
 coloring and some are purple with autumn. Beds 
 of herbs are ever green. Fountains shake their 
 silver in the sun. Streams abound as visitors to 
 the roots of the plants, and pipes with water con- 
 nect with palace and city. 
 
 All this, and more, is here, with proper hydro- 
 statics and irrigation, in the palatial gardens of 
 Prinkipo. There are windmills, colored like Iris, 
 perpetually pumping, with a grateful sea breeze as 
 the motor. The breeze is a good worker and sel- 
 dom " strikes," except for a few summer days. 
 Attached to house, stable and office are mystic 
 lines for telegraph and telephone, which deep. 
 browed Homer never vouchsafed to his heroes or 
 gods, with all their lording over lightning and 
 thundering oratory from Olympus. 
 
 There is one house here upon the island which 
 has on the outside, what most mansions have 
 within, viz. : exquisite colored tiles. This is very 
 unique. Its doors, porticoes and windows are 
 richly gilded and gracefully carved. It is but a 
 cottage, but it ever excites comment and admira- 
 tion, followed by the exclamation : "Why does an 
 old bachelor keep so much of beauty to himself, 
 instead of sharing it with a wife ? " 
 
 Many years ago this isle was thickly peopled. 
 
AN ENTERPRISING MALTESE. ^ 
 
 The people disappeared and the isle became a 
 waste, remaining thus until only a few short years 
 ago. It was a mountain of pine trees in a land 
 denuded of other vegetation. Like all such places, 
 it had to have a pioneer. Out of his enterprise, 
 within a half century, Prinkipo has become a 
 second garden of Eden. His name will be per- 
 petuated, for the first hotel of the island is named 
 after him, though it is located back and above that 
 of Signora Calypso, of the Homeric epic. Signer 
 Giacomo started early here. He kept goats and 
 loved America. He was a Maltese. That means 
 that he was more or less of a mixed race. Doubt- 
 less he was mostly Italian. He was a devout Cath- 
 olic. He came to these waters of the East a little 
 ragged, sailor imp. He was employed at a store 
 in Galata. There is a Maltese street there yet, 
 and through its fragrant purlieu I often ride, but 
 seldom walk. I hurriedly go through this rueful 
 rue, where Limburger cheese exchanges its odor 
 with herring, and onions help assafcetida to dilate 
 the nostril, ad unco naso. 
 
 After Giacomo's successes at Galata, he came 
 here and constructed houses around his own 
 larger house, and upon terraced plateaux that rose 
 in loveliness to the mountain top. He decorated 
 his terraces with a profusion of his favorite white 
 roses, whose fragrance was wafted far out at sea ; 
 thus in some manner, as it were, compensating in 
 
-4 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 his opulent days for the infragrance of his work in 
 the time of youthful poverty. What forty years 
 ago was " Giacomo's Delight " is now no more. 
 It is gone ; but the Giacomo Hotel with its pretty 
 terraces survives. It overlooks its rival, " The Ca- 
 lypso : " so, when Greek meets Maltese there is 
 a tug. Giacomo had a wife. She loved him and 
 music passing well ; but the island or her talent 
 did not furnish as much music as her husband did 
 diamonds for her adornment. So she bought a 
 barrel organ, and turned the handle. Handel 
 would have turned in his tomb if he had heard it. 
 The husband cultivated plants and statues. She 
 looked after the barrel organ and ironing. When 
 he came home and hung up his broad-brimmed 
 hat over a plaster cast of Diana, she quit her laun- 
 dry and took to Handel. He, Giacomo, had a 
 gun. Quails filled his larder, and the gun seldom 
 hung at rest near the statue of the divine hunt- 
 ress. With due regard for the religious cultiva- 
 tion of his own household and his neighbors' he 
 caused a church to be built. He made a very 
 happy speech in its honor on the opening of its 
 doors to the Catholic community. It was the first 
 Catholic church on this isle. 
 
 As I pass the hotel bearing his name, I take off 
 my hat. Why not ? Giacomo loved America. I 
 wander over the terraces, among the umbrageous, 
 gravelled walks so cleanly kept. I receive the 
 
THE HOME OF CALYPSO. ^ 
 
 greetings of mine host of " The Giacomo," who 
 proves to be a brother of mine host of the " Hotel 
 Royal," our winter home at Constantinople. He 
 bears the Greek patronym of Logothetti or 
 " word bearer." 
 
 Everywhere upon these isles we are reminded 
 of our classics, and of Homer especially. "Ca- 
 lypso " carries us back not merely to our college 
 days, but four thousand years. 
 
 There has been much discussion between geog- 
 raphers and other learned men, as to which one 
 of the Grecian islands was inhabited by Calypso. 
 Some have supposed the Island of Fano was the 
 fateful isle. This has been denied strenuously, 
 for it is admitted that there is nothing very attrac- 
 tive about that rocky island. An American in 
 passing by it, called it a " darned spot, only good 
 for sharpening a slate pencil." Still the classic 
 books generally regard Fano as the old Ogygia. 
 The argument to prove that this unpronounceable 
 and unmusical Greek island was that of the allur- 
 ing Calypso, is its position. It lies between the 
 south of Italy and Corfu, in the middle of the 
 channel which leads into the Adriatic. Another 
 argument, quite weak, however, is the fact that 
 Ulysses took twenty-one days to get from Ogygia 
 to Corfu. To know whether this was or was not 
 good sailing, one should make inquiry as to the 
 kind of vessel he sailed in, and the kind of weather 
 
76 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 he had. According to Homer, Ggygia, where 
 resided the beautiful-haired goddess, was supposed 
 to be \henombril of the sea, dp.pa.Xbs QojAoor^ just as 
 Delphi was called by the Greeks the navel of the 
 earth. Calypso, as we know, was the daughter of 
 Oceanus ; and Oceanus was a river-god, and ac- 
 cording to a correct knowledge of our rotund star, 
 whose roundness Herodotus laughed at, the river 
 was supposed to flow swiftly around the earth. 
 One thing, however, is proven by a learned pun- 
 dit, and that is that this island of Calypso occu- 
 pied a prominent position between Cadiz and 
 Troy. This is as much as to say that the town 
 of Kalamazoo is situated somewhere between San 
 Francisco and Boston. Pliny has something to 
 say about this remarkable island. He asserts that 
 it was not far from Cape Colonna, at the entrance 
 of the Gulf of Tarento. There is nothing against 
 this learned supposition, except that no such island 
 can now be found on the charts. However, it is 
 not unusual in the Mediterranean for an island 
 to pop up in the day, and pop under over night. 
 In fact, the island may be nothing but a myth ; 
 but the myths of Homer, to one who lives upon a 
 Grecian island, become so real that we forget they 
 are mythological. Here, we regard his heroes, 
 divinities and localities as real personages and 
 solid facts. Especially are they so regarded when 
 
SUMMER KIOSKS. ^ 
 
 such a substantial and festive modern Greek tav- 
 ern is called " The Calypso." 
 
 The gardens around many of the more splendid 
 edifices of Prinkipo extend down to the grotesque 
 rocks on the shore, upon which hang, in quaint style, 
 summer kiosks, or bath houses. Nearly all the ele- 
 gant houses have in the corners of their grounds 
 summer houses, where in the evening or after 
 dinner the family gathers and visitors are wel- 
 comed, and where tea and coffee are served. 
 
 At the scala, or on the verandas, or in these 
 kiosks, you may observe the consummate charms 
 of this isle. Murray, in his hand-book, says of 
 Prinkipo : " The air is mild and healthy, and the 
 heat in summer by no means so oppressive as at 
 Constantinople ; and the women are said to be the 
 most beautiful in the world." 
 
 This last sentence shall be the text of a chapter 
 by itself, dedicated to the beauties of the isle. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PRINKIPO NO RUNNING WATER STRANGE NOISES 
 
 THE VOCIFEROUS DONKEY THE BIRDS. 
 
 THE traveller to the Arctics notes the glory of 
 the aurora borealis, the stupendous glaciers, the 
 superb fiords, and sublime mountains ; but he 
 notes also the absence of running water. With- 
 out this element of beauty, no landscape, however 
 grand, is perfect. Even in the upper Alps, where 
 the tintinnabulation of the sheep-bells is faint, and 
 the torrents give only a murmur from below, the 
 eye tires of the frozen rigidity of all within its 
 range. Here, on these isles, there is this draw- 
 back ; yet running water is not missed so much, 
 as nature supplies so many other beauties. No 
 brooklet here sings between osiers and alders ; no 
 mountain stream bounds between crags and over 
 boulders, making motion and music. 
 
 Along the mountain sides we perceive long 
 lines and piles of broken stones. What are they ? 
 The debris, or moraines, left by torrents of a past 
 age ? Are these the relics of a once watery way, 
 or are they the ground-rubble of a glacial age ? 
 
 It was some time before my unscientific mindre- 
 
 78 
 
WATERS OF CELESTIAL BLUE. ^ 
 
 sponded to these queries. Pedro, whose very name 
 signifies a rock, inclined me to the opinion that 
 they were the once gathered yet now scattered re- 
 mains of boundary walls, when Prinkipo was in 
 the height of her refinement and culture. What 
 have we to do with such puzzles here ? Have we 
 not the magic climate, the narrow girth which 
 confines the essential beauty, the atmospheric tints 
 which color the mountain features, beautiful flow- 
 ers in cultivated gardens, refreshing nooks under 
 the umbrage of pine, olive, oak and fig, groves 
 of endless variety, gray stones and moss-covered 
 rocks, shrubbery whose fragrance sweetens the 
 sense, and a shore whose indentations remind one 
 of Prospero's isle, where the lover may load the 
 air with sighs in the " odd' angle of the isle ? " All 
 these we have ; but alas ! no running streams, no 
 tinkling fountains with thin sheafs of prismatic 
 silver, and no lakes and cascades to give the isle 
 more melody. But we have sea water of the love- 
 liest tint the celestial hue of blue. Should not 
 that of itself suffice ? 
 
 The ancient Greeks made much out of their 
 restricted water privileges. 
 
 What classic, historic and poetic splendors sur- 
 round the rivulets of Cephissus and Ilissus ! 
 They were monstered into wonders. They had 
 nymphs and naiads innumerable. The Missouris 
 and Danubes, Amazons and Rio Grandes are as 
 
8o THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 nothing comparable to the Scamander of Troy. 
 What will not genius expand and fancy glorify ! 
 If the aqueous sterility of Greece conduced to its 
 greatness, what will be said of the aggrandizement 
 of America, with its Ohio, Hudson and Mississippi, 
 its lakes and its gulfs, its Atlantic and Pacific ? 
 
 The voices of the isle are numerous. In such a 
 secluded spot, even the hum of a bee is noticed. 
 When the north-west wind comes to make its 
 streaks of shadow and its dimples of beauty on the 
 sea, the sighing thereof is soft-noted ; and when 
 evening comes, and the sun with a ruddy, violet 
 haze makes charming silhouettes out of the nine 
 isles of the archipelago, the wind begins to play 
 on its piney keys, with an autumnal solemn sound, 
 like that of a rich-toned organ. In its pauses you 
 sometimes hear the sonorous tremolo of the train 
 across the channel in Asia, as it rumbles along the 
 railroad between Hadji-Ali and Ismid, and sweeps 
 the chords of another age and civilization. In the 
 evening, as we pass the venerable church of Chris- 
 tos, we hear the chants of the parish Emphemerios. 
 They sound as if half hushed within a sepulchre, 
 like the service for the dead, with its piteous Kyrie 
 Eleison ; Christ^ Bodtheson. Breaking in on the 
 solemnity comes the pertinacious, shrill, rasping 
 monotone of the cicada. This insect is as old as 
 Homer. He likens it to a piping old man whose 
 voice is thinned by age. He describes it as be- 
 
THE ASIATIC CHANTICLEER. 3 r 
 
 longing to a bloodless race, which in summer days 
 " rejoice with feeble voice." 
 
 This insect, from the midst of the isle, and by 
 the sounding shore, sends up its scrannel piping 
 through the pines of the Diaskalon to arouse the 
 monks of Christos for their matins. The very 
 roosters of old Asia, across the channel, respond 
 in greetings to the god of day and the isles of the 
 sea. These cocks act as if they were the chartered 
 libertines of the East, because nearest the auroral 
 gate. Thus nature salutes the sacred sun, as 
 through Heaven's portals he blazes to give the 
 cheering ray and golden day. This sentiment is 
 Homeric ; but the chanticleer has become a sign 
 and clarion of patriotism ; for his voice arouses 
 our Dalmatian serviteur, who prepares to raise our 
 flag upon its staff to continue the salute. Along 
 with the domestic flap of our neighbors' fowls, I 
 can hear from my open window the patriotic flap 
 of our bunting, as I sink off again in dreams of 
 home. 
 
 This grasshopper, alias locust, alias katydid, 
 or alias cicada, is a sign of dry weather. In these 
 Greek isles, as in Cyprus, Necessity has taxed her 
 maternal solicitude to find some mode for its de- 
 struction. It spoils the crops. I do not know 
 that it is so destructive on these as on other isl- 
 ands, but it is very numerous, and it must live 
 on something green. Hence, there is much con- 
 6 
 
g 2 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 cern about the cicada. Judging by the sound, it 
 is as dry as a militia regiment on a muster day. 
 Some one is it Tennyson ? generalizes by say- 
 ing : 
 
 " At eve, a dry cicala sung." 
 
 Cicala is Italian for katydid, grasshopper or 
 cicada. The latter is the scientific term. Cicala 
 philologically indicates that the bird wants a drink. 
 You can never see the insect ; it is as green as the 
 tree on which it chirps. Chirp ? Yes ; for it does 
 not sing. Its hemipterous membranous transpar- 
 ency is in a scrape on the under side of itself, and 
 grates out by friction a shrill monotone, which on 
 this island is only equalled in its annoyance by the 
 unmelodious bray of the festive jackass. Its fals- 
 etto is relieved by snatches of sprightly Greek 
 songs, trilled in girlish glee by shoeless little Cal- 
 liopes, which rise in treblous hilarity from the cot- 
 tages of the valley below. 
 
 At dawn we are awakened by three peculiar 
 sounds. One is the " strain of strutting chanti- 
 cleer." This is Shakespeare's expression in the 
 " Tempest " ; so that the herald of the dawn be- 
 longed to other enchanted isles. It is literally a 
 strain which means an effort ; for the firstlings of 
 the chicken tribe try their tiny throats with a 
 feeble agony which soon arouses the ire and ambi- 
 tion of the elder cocks. These make the isle ring 
 
MORNING CALLS AND ECHOES. 33 
 
 from, side to side with their clarion voices ; and St. 
 George's Mount takes up the shrill crow, which 
 St. Nicholas echoes. Dreams here ? Dreams in 
 the early morning ? Mayhap ; but not rosy. 
 
 Another noise begins. At first it is an equiv- 
 ocal sort of bruit. Is it the distant thunder from 
 Olympus ? Is it the rolling of the Ismid train 
 again ? It starts afar. It approaches ! It is no ! 
 yes ! it is the jackass Diapason ! " It frights the 
 isle from its propriety." 
 
 Be it known that nearly all the locomotion of 
 these isles is done by these meek children of 
 misery. I am prepared to defend them for their 
 patience, industry and docility. I am ready to die 
 believing in their good sense, despite the libels 
 upon their long ears, as significant of obtuseness. 
 I have been familiar with them at home and abroad 
 in and out of Congress. They are not insensi- 
 ble to kindnesses. They are not donkeys in the 
 sense of dulness. I am in sympathy with Cole- 
 ridge's elegy to the ass's colt. In monumental 
 Egypt ; around thy walls, O Jerusalem ; and over 
 the mountains of these princely isles, I have be- 
 come their confidant and familiar. When Athana- 
 sius, our donkey driver, long may he be immor- 
 tal ! brings from below his white jackass arrayed 
 in gold cloth, with blue beads on its noble fore- 
 head and around its milky neck to keep off the 
 evil eye I know that I have a safe companion 
 
8 4 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES, 
 
 for the pleasant paths of the pine woods. But 
 there is something too much of this animal on the 
 isle, if one would seek quiet rest in the morning. 
 When donkey parties meet on the roads, there is 
 much recognition and confusion. I demand of 
 Athan'asius the reason of this sonorous braying. 
 He responds : 
 
 " You ought, Excellency, to hear them in the 
 month of May, when Jack salutes his Jenny, a 
 mile or more distant, and when the general jubilee 
 of affection begins its vociferate attentions ; " or 
 words to that effect. 
 
 After all, it is their affectionate nature that must 
 speak out in these inharmonious numbers. It is 
 said that in the isle of Crete, whence Homer im- 
 ported Stentor for his epic, the shepherds, owing 
 to the pure air, can be heard calling to their flocks 
 three miles and more distant. The undulations 
 of the air here furnish the same facility for sound. 
 The isle, by conformation, is a vast microphone. 
 Nothing is lost in the limbo of silence. 
 
 When Monsieur Chanticleer has quit his strut- 
 ting and crowing ; when Madame Poulet has 
 finished clucking her morning "lay;" when the 
 wind is quiescent and the star-spangled flag hangs 
 limp by its staff, and the cries of the bread and 
 vegetable mongers are stilled then, as if by some 
 infernal pre-concert this ear-benumbing noise of 
 the amorous and jocund jackass begins again. It 
 
MOR E BRA YING. g 5 
 
 starts with an exaggerated case of. asthma. 
 This rasps the soul. It is as if the beast would 
 lose and then catch his bated breath, with a harsh, 
 squeaky sibilation until a roar, as of forty hun- 
 gry lions of the desert, comes to its infinite relief. 
 It would seem as if all the powers of wheezy, 
 whistling, gasping suction were exhausted. And 
 so it is ; but then follow the terrific expirations of 
 the bellowing monster ! This process of suction 
 and emission is repeated with ''damnable itera- 
 tion," until it dies out in an agony unutterable 
 long drawn out. I can recall in adolescent asso- 
 ciation with the paternal saw-mill, agonizing creak- 
 ings of ungreased timber-wheels, and the filing of 
 saws on a frosty morning. I have had recent expe- 
 rience of the screaming shadoof, turned by blind 
 buffaloes, pumping the Nile upon the fruitful land. 
 In time I became accustomed to these chromatic 
 eccentricities ; but no one, not even the inhab- 
 itants of these isles, can ever become tolerant 
 of this braying. When the Equus Prinkipo 
 begins, as he does by lifting the upper lip 
 and showing his white teeth, the driver takes pre- 
 cautions against too prolonged an agony. He 
 makes a wild and desperate rush for Asinus. He 
 beats and kicks him. He jerks his head up, down 
 and awry. But still undaunted, the animal roars 
 again and again ; and his congeners from the town 
 below on the shore, yea, even afar off to the Dias- 
 
86 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 kalon on the summit, take up the horrid refrain, until 
 one would think Enceladus had walked out of the 
 sunless chambers of the earth to bellow upon the 
 affrighted air. Oh ! that these donkeys were 
 like the lion indeed, not of natural history, but of 
 the species Bottom would have played in such an 
 " aggravating voice " that he would roar you as 
 gently as any sucking dove, or any nightingale. 
 Certainly, Shakespeare, who was fond of locating 
 his midsummer fancies upon enchanted isles, must 
 have heard of these donkeys of Prinkipo, when 
 he said : " The isle is full of noises." 
 
 I am not prepared to join in the general objur- 
 gation against this animal. He has excellent 
 qualities. It is the duty of just criticism to dis- 
 criminate and not judge too harshly. It is said of 
 the mule that he is the meanest of brutes. I 
 would not be unjust to him even. I admit that he 
 has plenty of total depravity in his hind legs. I 
 further admit that he is more obstinate than his 
 step-brother ; but has he not the same evangelical 
 expression of countenance ? As the mule is only 
 half an ass, dispraise of him must be discounted at 
 the beginning fifty per cent. I assert boldly that 
 there are good mules as well as good donkeys. It 
 is a great mistake to suppose that the obstinacy 
 which belongs to both animals is a vice. On the 
 contrary, it is a virtue. Does not this quality of 
 nature give strength of character and courage ? 
 
FAMIL Y PRIDE. 
 
 Much has been said and written of the pride of 
 birth. Much wit has been expended in relation 
 to that pride. But it has never been applied ex- 
 cept in derision of the donkey. This is unjust. 
 Humble though his present station may be, he is 
 of an ancient family. Royalty is shown in the 
 thistle of his escutcheon. He has much more 
 reason to be proud than the mule. He has no 
 bar sinister on his shield. It may not be generally 
 known that the mule has an arrogant and offens- 
 ive pride, which amounts to vanity. The pride of 
 the mule is in some respects justifiable. It is in- 
 herited. It comes from his maternal connections. 
 Perhaps it is because of this that the mule joins in 
 the general objurgation against his father, the don- 
 key. If an ass is thrown with a pack of mules, he 
 is sure to be badly treated, kicked and curled like 
 a poor relatiori ; while the horse is treated with 
 the most distinguished consideration. The mule 
 is always anxious to be near his equine relative. 
 Those who are accustomed to these animals will 
 verify this remarkable statement. Yet with all his 
 faults the mule is a true patriot ; he served gal- 
 lantly in the late war, and has not applied for a 
 pension ! He took rank in the quartermaster's de- 
 partment and became a " brevet horse." 
 
 The ass is by no means a stupid beast ; he is 
 contemplative. He belongs to the tropical cli- 
 mate. The horse belongs to the colder latitude 
 
gg THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 and supplies almost its every emergency. The 
 ass is Oriental. His progenitor is from Central 
 Asia. He has long served as a domestic in its 
 regions. From there he went down into Egypt. 
 He is the offspring of a splendid civilization. The 
 Bible, which is a Semitic book, has niany references 
 to him, both in the satire in relation to Baalam, and 
 in the beautiful entry into Jerusalem. The ass has 
 been exalted by the Arab. He came in with the 
 Caliphs. He shared their honors. My recollection 
 is precise that when I was asked to ride to the Pyr- 
 amids, or to make a tour around ancient Thebes, 
 the admiring and eloquent donkey contractor never 
 failed to dignify the animal with such names as 
 " Washington," " Grant," and "Yankee Doodle." 
 
 The donkey of Egypt is quite an improvement 
 on all other donkeys that I have observed in the 
 Eastern world. His breeding is of high antiquity. 
 Great attention is paid to his pedigree : as much 
 as to that of the horse. In that warm climate 
 there are donkey barbers, who clip his hair in 
 order to prevent him from suffering from the 
 heat. When kept for private use this quadru- 
 ped is sometimes dressed in splendid housings, 
 rich and gaudy, having on a high pad or sad- 
 dle upon which one may even lie down in com- 
 fort. This aristocrat is by no means a sample, 
 however, of the ordinary animal, even in Egypt, 
 much less of those we find in Prinkipo. 
 

 f I 
 
 w 
 
AN EGYPTIAN INVENTION. 
 
 8 9 
 
 I am inclined to tell a story at the risk of in- 
 credulity. When in Egypt, in the winter of 1886, 
 the donkey I rode, which was named Sardanap- 
 alus, because he fared so sumptuously, became 
 overweary in our long ride to the temple of Abydos, 
 on the border of the desert. He was taken into 
 the cool chambers and hitched amidst its cyclopian 
 pillars. Under the very eye of a painted Rameses, 
 he hung up his head by his upper teeth to a ledge 
 of the structure, and thus rested. I thought at 
 first he was fascinated by the double-crowned 
 king of Egypt, who peered down at him with 
 almond eyes ; but no ! it was a little contrivance 
 of his own to hold up his heavy head. 
 
 I once served on a Committee on Foreign 
 Affairs in the House of Representatives with a 
 member from Nevada. He has since been Minis- 
 ter to the Sandwich Islands. In the absence of 
 better business before the Committee, he on one 
 occasion entertained that body with a description 
 of a contest between a grizzly bear and a jackass. 
 The idea that the grizzly had failed in the contest 
 gave great satisfaction to the Foreign Affairs 
 Committee. It has been my constant delight 
 since that time to review the terrific contest as 
 depicted by the then member from the Sierras. 
 If he did not exaggerate, as doubtless he did not, 
 there never was in the history of animated nature 
 a beast with such belligerent propensities. They 
 
9 o 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 reached even to his extremities. How he de- 
 feated the grizzly bear ; how he won the hearts 
 of the Nevada people ; how he pursued his enemy 
 until the last element and microbe of its being 
 was annihilated, can only be told by the ex-editor 
 of the Nevada Enterprise, whose "lecture" on 
 that subject deserves to be filed with his diplo- 
 matic correspondence with King Kalakaua ! 
 
 My memory of his description of this fighting 
 animal, recalled in the land of the Homeric Greek, 
 makes me tolerant of its vociferation in the early 
 morning. I have been told that after this victory, 
 Nevada seriously contemplated giving a place to 
 the donkey in her armorial bearings ; and that it 
 was only prevented by a chivalrous spirit of inter- 
 State comity which would avoid offence to Califor- 
 nia's grizzly shield. 
 
 Every defence of this patient animal, by per- 
 sons in or out of authority, has been welcome. 
 When questions are asked by his representative 
 in Congress, when the heads of departments send 
 in their reports, when a constituent writes for 
 the agricultural report which frequently contains 
 his portrait, when a newspaper makes inordinate 
 or irrational humor, well, I feel like defending 
 the donkey against the attacks which the incon- 
 siderate may make. ^Esop, in his fables, and the 
 world, with its satire, have made light of his ra- 
 tional attributes. He is yet to be thoroughly vin- 
 
v 
 
 4 I 
 
 9 
 
THE ASS IN HISTORY. QI 
 
 dicated. A French poet once said : " A force de 
 malheurs Vane est inter essant" Some of our 
 comic papers in New York have shown that the 
 ass is conspicuously an ass when he does not know 
 it. Oftentimes an irrational person may call a 
 man an ass. He does not intend to, but gener- 
 ally he wrongs the animal. 
 
 I like the theology of India. It reverences all 
 animals. The souls of men even inspired and 
 often ventured within the precincts and anatomy 
 of the animal after death. 
 
 I am proud to confirm the statement of the 
 member of Congress from Nevada, that the ass is 
 a warrior. On the authority of Voltaire, I may 
 allege that Mirvan, the twenty-first Caliph, was 
 called " The Ass" for his valor. Homer compared 
 the coward Paris to a horse ;,but when he sought 
 for a heroic synonym to glorify Ajax, he likened 
 him to an ass. 
 
 Greece and Rome were careful to produce the 
 best breed of these animals. They were more 
 precious than slaves in the market. Our own 
 Bible has many allusions to this animal. It 
 makes him sacred. The wild ass of Job may not 
 have the equine thunder in his neck ; he may not 
 snuff the battle from afar ; but he is, nevertheless, 
 good at a fight when it is near. He is a magnifi- 
 cent figure in Biblical history. We know his 
 relation with the life of the Holy Family. 
 
<p 2 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 Any one who has seen the Arab, or the donkey, 
 whether in Egypt, in Syria, or in these isles, 
 will understand that the family is not less holy 
 by the presence of this animal. 
 
 Why is it that the ass's head never figured 
 among the gargoyles and other strange carviogs 
 in the architecture of the Middle Ages? There 
 must have been a prejudice at that time against all 
 sedate and reverent objects. Coming down to a 
 later time, it is not unusual to see the ass led in 
 grand procession in the solemn ceremonies of the 
 Church. Chants were sung in his honor. Even 
 imitations of his braying, certainly more musical 
 than those of Prinkipo, were heard in the re- 
 sponses of the assistants who took up the melodi- 
 ous noises and gave harmony to the mediaeval 
 mind. 
 
 What though this animal have the power by its 
 voice to arouse us in the early morning ; why 
 should we be sluggard, when the virtues of pa- 
 tience and humility, which are typified in his life 
 and manners, are given for our instruction ? Let 
 us not be iconoclasts. Let us believe in the dig- 
 nity of the ass. Let him be rewarded, not as a 
 degenerate horse and the subject of universal rid- 
 icule, but as an illustrious object of all the ages, 
 having the qualities of antiquity and goodness, 
 faithful among the faithless, and by no means to 
 be disregarded because of his capacity of hearing. 
 
THE SONG OF THE BULBUL. ^ 
 
 It cannot be denied that the ass does sometimes 
 allow us inhabitants of Prinkipo a respite from his 
 music. It is at eventide. When the day begins, 
 the donkeys are at their useful work, as carriers of 
 water, provender, materials, furniture and persons. 
 When the evening comes with its soothing light 
 on the hill sides and amidst the pine shades , when 
 families begin to pack up their rugs and dishes, 
 preparing for a descent from the picnic grounds ; 
 when lovers begin softly to steal away and coo 
 amidst the rocks ; when the flecked and shaggy 
 trunks and limbs of the old pines begin to cast their 
 long shadows over the sinuosities of the paths 
 oh ! then comes the quietude beyond all other 
 spots of earth. Then each person may wander 
 at will over the cliffs and under the silent groves, 
 utterly isolate with the summer sea that makes 
 no murmur against the placid shore. 
 
 I have the same fondness for birds in which 
 George Sand delighted. They are almost as 
 indispensable in a landscape as trees or running 
 waters. When we first came to Prinkipo, in the 
 late spring, there was at daybreak, in the olive 
 trees of our neighbor, a bird which I persisted in 
 recognizing as a nightingale. Such " liquid sweet- 
 ness long drawn out," must have belonged to the 
 bulbul. He made love to our roses like a true 
 Oriental. He made love to a whole garden or 
 harem of roses the profligate ! However, he 
 
94 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 departed as mysteriously as he came. The little 
 brown rossingnol, which our " Amty," the cook, 
 kept caged under the catalpa tree in the back 
 court, refused to sing any more responses. Her 
 heart was off in the further East, where the seven 
 rivers of Damascus are accordant and these birds 
 sing the summer-time away. 
 
 Then we have swallows, who make their dudish 
 toilets early in the summer. They cleave the clear 
 air of the mountain sides, dart out of the vine- 
 yards, and flit amidst the pine trees, never 
 seeming to alight. They are quite tame and 
 fearless. One morning while sauntering up the 
 mountain I notice that two of these birds are 
 following me. When I stop they hover about my 
 head ; sometimes within arm's length. I marvel. 
 What does it mean ? Am I near a nest ? Are 
 these the mother and father of a brood, as to 
 whose safety the parents are apprehensive ? I 
 move on. Still they follow, darting far down into 
 the valley, then sweeping on their electric wing 
 to the very crown of the mountain and about 
 the crown of my hat. I reason that they have 
 been domesticated at the hearthstone or in the 
 chimney, and so I solve the problem. A month 
 or so ago, one morning, a cloud of blackbirds, 
 our own cornfield larcener, took possession of the 
 woods of the isle. They are known here as petty 
 
ISLAND ORNITHOLOGY. gc 
 
 crows, and do much damage. They soon left for 
 better foraging. 
 
 This isle is distinguished for quail. They 
 come about the first of September in great flocks. 
 Already some of the pioneers have heralded 
 their approach. From the hills opposite our 
 villa shots are heard in the morning. When 
 the season is full it is dangerous to be about the 
 woods, the shots are so numerous. These 
 birds are migrating from the grain plateaus 
 of Russia to the balmier fields of Egypt. Their 
 resort here reminds me of the wild pigeons in 
 the West in Ohio, in my old district in Licking 
 County, where for years they were wont to come 
 and roost as regularly as the seasons came. They 
 made the air black. They covered trees and fences 
 with their multitudes. The quail here are not so 
 numerous ; but they fill the shrubbery. Some of 
 the rich folk of the isle are buying up preserves 
 to limit their destruction. After a few weeks' rest, 
 during which they are massacred by the thousands, 
 even by boys with sticks, the survivors take 
 flight over the sea to San Stefano, or the shores of 
 the Hellespont, en route for " winter sunbeams." 
 Their flight and multitude raise a question about the 
 quails of the wilderness, when Israel was hungry. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 COMPOSITE PEOPLE OF PRINKIPO OLD CUSTOMS AND 
 
 REVELS ITALIAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 ALTHOUGH, as I have said, the mass of the popu- 
 lation and visitors upon these isles are Greeks, 
 yet there are many sojourners belonging to other 
 nationalities. These are French, Italian, English, 
 German, Russian, Greek and Armenian. It is 
 not infrequently that we hear a veritable Pente- 
 cost. In these polyglotical accomplishments the 
 Levantines are pre-eminent. They are the de- 
 scendants somewhat mixed of all the commer- 
 cial and adventurous people who have sought the 
 Orient and its capital for occupation and emolu- 
 ment. Many wear the fez ; these are the subjects 
 of the Porte. As we take our excursions by car- 
 riage and donkey, horse and foot, over these 
 mountains and through these valleys, we often 
 meet, ascending the hill in a palanquin, some aris- 
 tocratic lady. She is loath to quit the old custom, 
 one by no means inconvenient or abandoned in 
 Constantinople. We meet families and groups of 
 these Levantine people. Most of them of both 
 sexes dress like Europeans. Until they speak, 
 
A POLYGLOT BARBER. - 
 
 it is difficult to tell one race from the other. 
 Even then, as most of them speak Italian, French 
 and Greek, it is difficult. The Greek predomi- 
 nates even above the Levantine. The Italian is 
 next. The French tongue is used mostly among 
 the wealthy and official classes. The Levantine 
 inherits from his ancestor facile organs of speech. 
 So easy are these organs that it is no trouble to 
 form, in a mechanical way, by the chorda vocales, 
 with tongue, mouth and lips, the various sounds 
 and the words of the various dialects of the " seven- 
 ty-two nations," of which Constantinople boasts. 
 Whether this be one of the evidences of heredity, 
 certainly it is remarkable how open-mouthed and 
 comfortable these people are, who for generations 
 have talked a dozen languages, and can roll the 
 words, spread the syllables and intone the sentences 
 of these different tongues. I know of children 
 who, while accomplished in French, English, Greek 
 and Turkish, revel in Russian and grapple with 
 German, as with their playthings. 
 
 My first tonsorial experience is in a barber 
 shop of the old town of Prinkipo. Most of the 
 barbers are polyglotically inclined. My particular 
 barber is either a Greek, a Maltese, a Sclav, a 
 Bulgarian, or a Montenegrin. It is impossible at 
 first to tell his native tongue. He has French 
 glibly. He speaks a " leetle Inglis" and under- 
 stands less. He is well up in Italian, as many of 
 
 7 
 
9 8 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 the families in this vicinage are. He has some 
 knowledge of Spanish as kindred to the Italian. 
 This extraordinary learning always gives me a 
 shudder, and especially when under his razor or 
 shears. Being a stranger on the island, and hav- 
 ing no very pronounced national features, it was 
 equally difficult for him to ascertain my national- 
 ity, except by inquisition long and pitiless. All 
 I could do was to arm myself with the affirmatives 
 and negatives of various languages. With these, 
 I made myself complaisant, to save my face from 
 bloodshed. My first conversation with this artist 
 confirmed the general reputation as to the gossipy 
 quality of the Barber of Seville. He had all the 
 gossip of the isles, including its languages. The 
 conversation ran somewhat after this style : 
 
 BARBER : " You have been here long ? " 
 
 I reply in Bohemian, " Ne / " 
 
 He easily understood that. 
 
 " You are here for your health ?" 
 
 I reply in Danish, affirmatively and negatively, 
 "Ja ! " "Nei, minherre ! " " Yes, sir," and " No, 
 sir." This puzzled him. 
 
 " An army gentleman, perhaps ? " 
 
 I reply in German, " Nein, mein herr" 
 
 " O, then you are a navy officer?" 
 
 Having in view my position as Admiral of the 
 launch, I reply in Hungarian ; because, lucus a non 
 
A BARBARIC CONTEST. 
 
 lucendo, Hungary is an inland country and like our 
 own, without a navy, 
 
 "Igen! "^Yes." 
 
 " Your vessel is at Constantinople?" 
 
 Remembering that there was an Italian emi- 
 grant named Christopher Columbus of naval re- 
 nown, I reply: "Si, signore" 
 
 " You will bring your vessel to Prinkipo ?" 
 
 Ah ! here was my opportunity. It is the mod- 
 ern Greek in which I reply : " Nae vevayos" 
 
 He is thunderstruck. It is evidently his mother 
 tongue. Likely he has a Polish father; who 
 knows ? When he asks me in French : 
 
 " Will your vessel touch at Athens ?" 
 
 I respond in Polish, " Takf" No. 
 
 And then, with some hesitation, I add the 
 French word " Petttre" Perhaps. 
 
 -You will visit Egypt?" 
 
 " Sim, senhor" This is Portuguese for " Yes, sir." 
 
 The gesture or the manner with which these re- 
 sponses are made encourages him ; for he immedi- 
 ately asks whether I have ever been in Albania. 
 I have no negative or affirmative in any of the 
 languages of the Adriatic. My Dalmatian servi- 
 tor, Pedro, is absent and my next best affirmative 
 is in Russian. 
 
 "Do prawda" Perhaps, being affiliated with 
 the Sclav, he understands this language. 
 
 " You have never been in Egypt ? " 
 
I00 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 As the pine and the palm are associated in my 
 mind, and having connected the Polar Midnight 
 Sun with the Pyramids of the Pharaohs, I respond 
 in Swedish, making it intense, 
 
 "Ja ! " Adding a little affirmative in Roumanian 
 to give intensity to the remark, " Gze." 
 
 After a pause in the conversation he resumes. 
 He believes that he has my nationality fixed. He 
 surmises that I am from some Balkan province, 
 and he asks : 
 
 " Have you been in Roumelia, Bulgaria, 
 Servia, Montenegro and Herzegovina?" 
 
 Knowing that I could not answer this truthfully, 
 and not being able to answer it partially, I give 
 him back in Roumanian an emphatic negative : 
 
 " Na canna, bucca" 
 
 11 You have been quite a traveller ! " 
 
 This suggests the Chinese as the fitting Ian* 
 guage for the affirmative, and I say : 
 
 " She ! " 
 
 Having no reference to Haggard's novel ; for it 
 was not then out. To make the "she" expres- 
 sive, I add another affirmative which I had care- 
 fully studied while boarding with the Chirrese 
 Legation in Washington. 
 
 " Tajin!" 
 
 " You like the Chinese, monsieur?" 
 
 Having succeeded so well with the Chinese, I 
 answer promptly in the negative : 
 
AN INTERESTING TALK. IQI 
 
 This monosyllable disgusts him. His subordi- 
 nates gather around the chair where I was being 
 shaved, interested in this composite conversation. 
 The artist then asks if I had visited Jerusalem. 
 Here was my great break-down. Notwithstanding 
 I had represented a Hebrew community in New 
 York, with more synagogues than Jerusalem had 
 in the time of Solomon, I was at a loss for a 
 Hebrew affirmative. Happy thought ! I re- 
 spond promptly in the Arabic tongue, with its 
 guttural peculiarity : 
 9 "Na'am" 
 
 It sounded to me after I uttered it like profan- 
 ity, and I fell back as gracefully as I could, waiting 
 for the next attack, and equipped with a Japanese 
 expletive. 
 
 ''You like Constantinople ?" 
 
 I respond in a sweet Japanese accent : 
 
 " Sama, san / " 
 
 " How long have you been in Constantinople ?" 
 
 I give it to him in English. 
 
 " I arrived there in the year 1851 thirty-six 
 years ago." 
 
 " Mon Dieu !mon Dieu ! mon Dieu / " he ex- 
 claims. 
 
 "Have you lived there ever since that time?" 
 
 " Beaucoup, monsieur ! " 
 
 He has not yet learned my nationality. I am 
 
102 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 afraid every moment that he will strike America. 
 It comes : 
 
 " Perhaps you have been in America ? " 
 
 " Wa'al, yaas, I guess ! " 
 
 He could not understand this, for he had not 
 been educated at Robert College, nor had he 
 abided in Vermont. 
 
 I ask him in French which America he means. 
 He says : 
 
 " South America. I have a cousin of my wife's 
 there, and I would like to know how the country 
 looks." 
 
 " Le nom du cousin de votre femme f " I ask. 
 
 " Pierre Moulka Pari Michipopouli. He is 
 like you, monsieur, quite a traveller." 
 
 Then began a fusillade of questions and rattling 
 replies. 
 
 " You have lived in Paris, monsieur ? " 
 
 "Jamais ! " Never. " Been to Genoa ? " " Si, 
 signore" " Ah, you are English, are you not?" 
 With the intense Turkish negative I respond : 
 "Yok!" "French?" "Won." "German?" 
 "Nem." "Sclav?" "Nee/" "Italian?" "No, 
 signore" " Ah ! Espagnol ? You look like one." 
 "Pardon, monsieur, I am not." " Well," said he, 
 taking breath, " will you tell me, monsieur, 
 where you do come from ? " 
 
 " Don't you remember the only nation in the 
 
COSMOPOLITAN APPEA RANGES. 1 03 
 
 world where the barber is as good as a king ? " I 
 said proudly. 
 
 " Oh, Switzerland. Sapristi! Corpo de Bacco !" 
 
 Understanding that last remark perfectly, I offer 
 him a cigarette and say : " No, I am not Swiss." 
 
 "Brazeel?" "Jamats" 
 
 The way that barber rubs the unguent into my 
 hairless scalp and hirsute beard shows that he is a 
 disappointed man. 
 
 The next time I visit the shop I receive 
 marked attention. The hands all rise up. They 
 pick up the earth, in a Turkish salaam. They 
 distribute it in courtesy to the American Minis- 
 ter, whom they had meanwhile discovered. As I 
 had been frequently turned away from the doors 
 of our American Congress after twenty-five years' 
 service, because I did not act or look like a mem- 
 ber, so I was unrecognized here, by the " Oi 
 Barber oi? as having no national characterization. 
 America was the last race or people to which 
 this Greek barber assigned me. 
 
 Let me illustrate further. My wife and my- 
 self start out in a carriage for a turn about the 
 isle. We drive over the Christos road toward 
 what is called " The Saddle." There the vale 
 spreads into gardens, and leads, on either side, 
 by gentle depressions, to the sea. Here 
 are two caffane'es or diaskalons. Upon ter- 
 races, and under the shade of the pines, are sev- 
 
IO4 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 eral hundred tables, with seats all temptingly ar- 
 ranged. At various angles the blue sea is visible. 
 Here you may call for coffee, lemonade, wine or 
 milk. From the peddler, dressed in his spotless 
 robes, you may buy an ice , for he has a small 
 confectionery shop on his back, with dainty spoons 
 and dishes. Or you may do more : buy the toy 
 dishes, as Madame does, to carry home as souvenirs. 
 Our carriage has stopped on a terrace where there 
 is a picturesque family group of a dozen or more. 
 They are sitting or reclining on their mats or car 
 pets. The outer wrappings of the females are 
 hanging from the trees near by. They are having 
 a day's outing. A faithful white hound, at the foot 
 of the tree, keeps watch over the clothing. The 
 grown daughters are off climbing the neighboring 
 peak of St. George. We hear their laughter and 
 fun far up the mountain. The men are smoking 
 about in utter ease, while grandmother, mother, 
 servant and children roam about the woods. That 
 which attracts us most is the odd costume of the 
 children. It is made up of very gay-colored stuffs, 
 red, white and blue stripes alternating. It recalls 
 our own national emblem. Madame is en- 
 chanted, and calls one of the children to her for 
 examination. As the child cannot talk French 
 or English, only Turkish, Russian and Greek, her 
 petite teacher, dressed in the same ruddy trainless 
 garb, comes up courteously. She adds French to 
 
MINERVA AS A MAIDED IO e 
 
 her accomplishments. Her name is Minerva 
 Kypriades. She is a Greek, twenty years of age, 
 and looks sixteen ! Her eyes are as black as her 
 raven hair. She is now on a vacation. She 
 ter~hes school in Odessa. She will not, however, 
 be called Russian, much less Turkish, although 
 born in Constantinople. She is Minerva 
 helmet, spear and all, without the Gorgon 
 shield. She explains her costume as Russian, 
 a dress not for the city, but for the 
 camfiagna - - and of the country of Mordovski. 
 It consists of a dark blue cotton skirt, with a 
 wide red border, heavily embroidered in gay 
 colors, red predominating, inserted above a very 
 deep hem. The waist is of blue cotton, with 
 the same style of gay collar as the trimming 
 or border of the skirt. Her flowing sleeves are of 
 alternate bands of red, white and blue, edged with 
 the lace of the country. A very large square 
 tablier, or apron, falls to the edge of the skirt. 
 This completes the attractive picture. I must not 
 forget the red silk scarf. It partly confines her 
 heavy black tresses. The same fabric is worn by 
 all the children. The young teacher has a heavy 
 cincture, a la Grec. The buckles are big and of 
 silver. Around her neck are several heavy gold 
 chains of peculiar workmanship. This tem- 
 porary governess of the children, whose grand- 
 mother sends them all to us in turn to make their 
 
I06 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 pretty obeisance, seems nothing loath to chat 
 fluently. 
 
 "Will not the children," I ask her, "give us a 
 specimen of their acquisitions ?" 
 
 " Yes, with pleasure." 
 
 She makes them form a circle, and they com- 
 mence their recitation. They make the pine 
 woods echo to their tender Demosthenic philippics 
 against the Turk. She has taught her little 
 charges patriotic and other verses, in which the 
 hated Ottoman comes in for vehement denunciation. 
 A small ten-year-old pupil recites an appeal to Gre- 
 cian patriotism. She casts furtive glances around 
 lest some furious Ottoman with big turban and 
 terrific scimitar should leap from the bushes. 
 Luckily, all are Greeks upon the grounds. The 
 youthful declaimer is allowed free range. Only 
 upon sympathetic ears falls the stirring and furi- 
 ous waves of Grecian anathema. Then a dialogue 
 is recited. Then the small child, in costume, recites 
 a Greek song, in the modern Greek, of course 
 which is in strange contrast with her infantile 
 voice and mien. " How does it sound, compared 
 with the ancient Greek ? " you perhaps ask. That I 
 can hardly answer. It is not unmusical. Its ca- 
 dences, at times, are quite like the Italian, and in 
 places it had some tough and harsh Teutonic 
 tones; but on the whole it is quite musical. 
 
 The conversation of those we meet, especially 
 
PUNCH AND JUD Y SHO W. 
 
 107 
 
 that of the Greek women of this isle, is soft and 
 sweet in tone. Perhaps these young Graeco-Rus- 
 sians have given to the modern Greek pronuncia- 
 tion some jagged and ragged consonants which 
 are foreign to the broad vowelled, ore-rotundo 
 speech of the sweet South. 
 
 The performance of the children being over, we 
 call for ices and lemonade. A hurdy-gurdy ap- 
 proaches. We improvise a Russian dance of the 
 little ones en costume. Then, after much courtesy 
 from the group, we bid them "good-bye." 
 
 The young teacher promises to call at our 
 villa, where she has seen the flag. This she ac- 
 complishes at a propitious time with her pupils. 
 We receive them in the arbor overlooking the 
 road, and while listening to other recitations, we 
 are fortunate enough to see the Turkish " Punch 
 and Judy " approaching. The show is stopped and 
 a i^N piasters serve to reciprocate their entertain- 
 ment of us in the forest. And a funny one it 
 was. 
 
 The Turkish " Punch " is very grotesque. He car- 
 ries on his show through all the details from the 
 cradle to the wedding, and from the wedding to 
 the grave, with all the alternations of funny 
 episode. 
 
 We saw our little Greek teacher no more ; but 
 she kindly remembered our admiration of the 
 pretty Mordovski peasant costume, and sent 
 
I0 3 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 Madame an apron of many colors, embroidered 
 by her own cunning skill. 
 
 It is said that this isle is much changed since 
 the Crimean war. Then it was Turkish embarrass- 
 ment and Greek opportunity. The soldiers of 
 that war helped to give piquancy and adventure 
 to the pleasurable gatherings upon the isle. 
 Then the Greeks of both sexes met at these 
 places of recreation and diversion, with all their 
 bravery of talk and toilet. This was espe- 
 cially the case in the old town of Prinkipo, which 
 of late years has lost much of its prestige and at- 
 traction. Still its immense plane tree in the old 
 plaza spreads its shadow, and the restaurants 
 around it do a good business, amid many amusing 
 escapades. 
 
 The old town reminds one of a town in Italy. 
 It has narrow streets ; the markets are crowded 
 with fruit, fish and meat stalls, and the street is full 
 of donkeys and carriages, awaiting the arrival of 
 the boats from the city. There are many saloons 
 and coffee-houses, for the body of the folks are 
 Greeks, and Greeks dearly love a tavern. There 
 is in the homes of these traders and denizens 
 much to remind one of the Dutch housen. 
 They have a balcony or bay-window overhanging 
 the street, with lights and beauties looking out at 
 each end. The balcony is generally full of black- 
 eyed, black-haired girls, who gaze curiously at the 
 
LO VE AND RAKI. 
 
 passers-by. The old town once had its own pier 
 of debarkation and embarkation. That pier is 
 now in ruins, having given way to the more preten- 
 tious stone scala, in the new town. 
 
 What merry times those were when the Maygar 
 coffee-house supplied with its music, viands and 
 intrigues the company which met around the big 
 plane tree for coquetry and deviltry. 
 
 Then husbands and brothers here met wives 
 and sisters, to say nothing of lovers, to smoke 
 cigarettes, drink lemonade and sherbet, and eat 
 the walnuts already peeled and cracked. Then it 
 was crowded of an evening, not as the scald res- 
 taurant is now, to hear the music of the brass 
 band, discoursing operatic airs, but to listen to an 
 Arab band of tomtoms and flageolets. This bar- 
 baric music seems to encourage the drinking of 
 raki by the men. This white whiskey of the 
 Orient is worse than Jersey lightning. Whether 
 it was the music or the liquor that made them " rak- 
 ish," is not told by gossipy tradition. But at the 
 time of which I speak, it was the mode for the 
 fashionable beauties Greek and Armenian to sit 
 amidst the smoke and the raki fumes, on the little 
 stools yet in vogue along the Bosphorus, for the ad- 
 miration of the ruder sex. The Maygar hotel yet re- 
 mains, not far from the present scala ; but it lacks 
 the great overshadowing plane tree, whose roots and 
 boughs were protected as all old trees are here, by 
 
j I0 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 a stone wall, and whose wooden seats and stools 
 about the trunk were dimly lighted by lamps from 
 its spreading branches. Caffantes surrounded the 
 tree ; and while the Arab band played, torches burned 
 and threw their shimmering light on the Greek 
 and Armenian beauties seated around. Then there 
 was a scene unknown to the witcheries of the 
 present wooing world. These torches were called 
 madahs. We still see them on the hills upon all 
 festal nights. Then the Greeks burned them in 
 honor of their "flames." The color is light blue, 
 and much favored by those who represent Hamlet's 
 father, in a proper ghostly style. When, there- 
 fore, in the good old time, a lover wished espe- 
 cially to honor his inamorata, he confidentially in- 
 formed the master of the caff ante that he must 
 burn so many madahs at his expense, and throw the 
 light so as to designate and honor the " She " 
 whose " fair divided excellence lies in him." Then 
 the elected beauty shone out as a star. Envy glit- 
 tered in other eyes. The swain arose and made 
 his Oriental salaam toward the dark-eyed beauty, 
 while the tom-tom of the tambourine and the scrap- 
 ing of the viols celebrated this novel mode of elec- 
 tion. On some occasions, when too much madah 
 or raki was on board, little fortunes were spent 
 by rich young Greeks, in honor of their favorite 
 Helens. This was the mode of courting by the 
 light of the moon ; for madah means " moonlight." 
 
CONJOINT PA TRIO TISM. j j r 
 
 When enacted by droning music and crazy mastic 
 its spectral light must have been effective. All 
 that is changed now. 
 
 When the United States man-of-war " Kear- 
 sarge " was here about the Fourth of July, at the 
 request of the citizens I asked Admiral Franklin 
 if he could send his brass band to the scala, to 
 play for the assembled islanders. He acquiesced. 
 Its music made ur flag known and popular. 
 When I went down on the Sunday evening prome- 
 nade, after the performance, I found our flag grace- 
 fully entwined with the Turkish ensign over the 
 archway of one of the cafes. The stars add their 
 glow to the crescent. This conjoint patriotism is 
 as inspiring as the heaven above is glorious with 
 the crescent moon and the brilliant constellations 
 of the deep Oriental sky. There is an Arab band 
 of six robustious Maltese performing. Our patriot- 
 ism succumbs to curiosity. The crowd seems en- 
 tranced by the weird music of the strange instru- 
 ments. There are two fiddles, a tambourine of fish 
 skin, and a sort of zither. These make tinkling 
 noises to the rapid movements of the vocalization 
 which are appetizers to the thirsty Greeks. The 
 Arab music brings Egypt to my memory. All 
 that is wanting to make the illusion perfect is a 
 bevy of brown-browed dancing girls. The dim 
 lamp in a sepulchral hall displays strange cross- 
 legged folk, smoking on divers divans. This 
 
1 ! 2 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 Arabic style of droning scarcely changes a note for 
 an hour. The words sung are loose love-words. 
 It is fortunate that the Arab tongue is not well 
 known. Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words" 
 would have been more decorous. 
 
 At every turn and angle in these isles and waters 
 there is something to remind one of Italy ; and 
 especially of Naples, Genoa, Pisa and Venice. 
 There is, vice versa, much in* superb Genoa, and 
 palatial Venice in her primal bridal beauty, to 
 remind us of these Grecian isles and Orient lands. 
 Ischia and Procida are the hand-maidens of 
 Naples, veiled with a violet haze, which gives them 
 their witchery of loveliness. The Genoese tower 
 at Galata dominates the Golden Horn with a 
 proud and ancient glory. Upon the Moslem Sun- 
 day this tower flies the ruddy crescent, a symbol 
 of dynastic change. You cannot tread the narrow 
 declivities of Galata without coming upon evi- 
 dences of Italian supremacy there in the elder 
 time, for Galata was once an Italian city, and the 
 seat of an immense commerce. The Venetian pal- 
 ace is almost concealed by its plebeian surround- 
 ings. It has remained as the property of Austria, 
 whose Legation is therein established ; for on the 
 secession of Venetia from Austria, Italy did not 
 reclaim this Oriental possession. The most sig- 
 nificant reminder of pristine Italian glory in these 
 
DANDOLO'S TOMB. j j . 
 
 lands it was my fortune to find in the upper gal- 
 lery of St. Sophia. 
 
 The other day, in walking over the worn stone 
 pavement of the women's gallery of the old Greek 
 edifice of St. Sophia lo ! Dandolo, the blind non- 
 ogenarian of the Latin conquest of Constantino- 
 ple at the beginning of the thirteenth century. 
 Not in the body do we discover him. The place 
 of his burial is unknown ; although it is known 
 that the heroic old doge and ambassador to Con- 
 stantinople had St. Chrysostom's church for his 
 sepulchre. There at my very feet, almost dust- 
 hidden, I spell out his name ! His name is quite 
 legible. It gave a spell to the " Stones of Venice," 
 which Ruskin has not catalogued. Like the stones 
 of Memnon, even in the dim light from the dusty 
 windows of that immense corridor, it gives its 
 music from another sphere. Captor of Zara, soul 
 of the Fourth Crusade, and Nemesis of the Com- 
 nenus, it was his fire and vigor, when blind and 
 aged, which compassed the fall of Stamboul, 
 despite its 478 towers, its eighteen miles of triple 
 walls, its fosses and fortifications, and its thousand 
 years of immunity. Here he lies somewhere 
 under the spacious dome ; but his fame has not 
 died. The dragoman of our Legation, Gargiulo, 
 who was with me when we discovered his monu- 
 mental stone, is himself of Italian descent. He 
 
 8 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 has promised me to rescue his bones and indite his 
 history. 
 
 This incident is mentioned that the reader may 
 not marvel at the quantity and quality of the 
 musical dialects spoken in and around Constanti- 
 nople. The variety of speech is the consequence 
 of the enterprise and eminence of Italy in the Middle 
 Ages. Why, St. Mark's at Venice is but a copy of 
 St. Sophia, almost its original ! The latter was 
 spoiled to decorate the former. What spoils ! 
 what opulence and imagery ! what pillars and al- 
 tars ! " Ouida," who lives and writes at Venice, and 
 receives much of her weird and luxurious fancies 
 out of its very stones, has stormed against the 
 abolition of the fairy gondolas and the introduc- 
 tion of steam tugs with their Cardiff smirch upon 
 the poetic and, I may add, the unfragrant canals. 
 She protests in vain. It is like my lady of the 
 twelfth century in her boudoir, embroidering a 
 shepherd and his love, hurling furious obloquy 
 against the loom of Jacquard. Let her Venetians 
 restore St. Sophia ! But no ! It is Venice that 
 is being "restored." Since 1840 St. Mark's, which 
 had been sinking into the mud, has been under- 
 going repair to establish its stability. Many a 
 strange inscription appears in the transformation. 
 Art not architecture, it is said, gave St. Mark's to 
 the world. It was rather artifice than art. Its 
 foundations and dome stand amid the changeful 
 
SPOILS FROM ST. SOPHIA. j j r 
 
 dynasties and religions. No shoving or bracing 
 is needed at St. Sophia ; what is needed is that 
 which once glorified it. When the Moslem white- 
 wash is scraped off and the stolen property re- 
 turned, what a wealth of art will reappear in the 
 church of the Divine Wisdom ! When that is 
 done we will all join in the Te Deiim Laudamus, 
 even though it be chanted in the sweet tongue 
 of the Italian spoiler. " 111 got, ill gone," says the 
 proverb. In spite of all efforts to save the splen- 
 did pile of St. Mark's it is cracked irremediably 
 The lagoons, like time, are slowly hiding its 
 beauties. No Mosaic wand can drive back the 
 Adriatic. No Dandolo, like the Danish king, 
 lives to say to the Adriatic : " Thus far ! and no 
 farther!" Under the great dome of St. Mark's 
 the tide ebbs and flows, or such tide as the Med- 
 iterranean has to ebb and flow. No sealed 
 crypt keeps out impermeably its ooze. The floors 
 are breaking up. The invaluable decorations will 
 soon follow. The mosaics are being effaced by 
 the tourists' feet. Soon St. Mark's must be a new 
 structure, on new foundations, or she will perish. 
 
 It is not the Genoese tower, that stands on a 
 treeless promontory of Halki, looking toward 
 Stamboul, that alone marks the footsteps of Italy 
 over these isles and lands. The hotels and the 
 tinge of the Levantine patois show the recent 
 
1 1 6 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 prevalence of Italian trade and growth on these 
 shores. Wordsworth sung of Venice : 
 
 " Once she did hold the gorgeous East in fee." 
 
 But now Italy is impotent to stay the great white 
 Czar, or to do more than make the protest which 
 she helped others to enforce in the Crimean war. 
 Still Italy, next to France, is the relict radiance of 
 European domination in these waters of the com- 
 mercial Orient ! 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PRINKIPO ITS MONASTERY OF ST. GEORGE. 
 
 THE mist rolls away from my enchanted isle by 
 five in the morning, if there be a mist ; or if not, 
 the morning star sings "its spirit ditty of no 
 tone," and departs. Then there is a reproduction 
 of the evening before. It glows and glories over 
 the Asian mountains. Their outlines are revealed 
 in roseate tints ; and when the sun-god is fully 
 adrive in his car, there appears a series of pictures 
 on water and on land from minaretted Stamboul 
 to the scattered villas at the base of the Bithynian 
 mountains. Windows glance with their diamond 
 splendors, morn and evening, like Prince Arthur's 
 shield, whose brilliancy was so dazzling that it was 
 covered with a veil, and "which to wight he never 
 wont disclosed." The sails of the caiques show 
 whiter as they sail. The sea-mews glisten, 
 blanched in the light, as they sport on wave and 
 in air. The early shepherd carols, as he goes his 
 rounds for the pasturage of his mixed flock of 
 goats and sheep. There is a fresher scent to the 
 wild shrubbery and to the pine odor. The arbu- 
 
 117 
 
I !g THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 tus and cistus take away the stony glare of the 
 ground. They garland the very vertebrae of the 
 isle. The vineyards come forth in the morning 
 lustre, with new dew, all prismatic ; and the olive- 
 trees give to their peculiar dull verdancy a fresher 
 than their normal legal-tender tint of silver. The 
 lidless eye of God looks upon the prospect and it 
 rejoices. It is new born of a night of starry splen- 
 dor ! 
 
 As the sun rises in the heavens, it is canopied 
 with fleecy clouds. The ferry comes laden with 
 Greeks and Armenians intent on picnics. Don- 
 keys are in demand. Gardeners sprinkle and 
 dress their favorite beds en toilette for the day. 
 Around goes on the " chirp! chirp!" of the ci- 
 cada. We have dedicated this superb day to an 
 excursion to the remote end of the isle on the 
 east. There St. George's monastery holds high 
 court. 
 
 The early Byzantine monks, and the emperors 
 who sometimes became monks, always sought the 
 highest mountains for their monasteries. There 
 was one built on the summit of Mount Olympus, 
 I mean the Mysian Olympus just as there had 
 been one built on the peak of Athos. 
 
 The monasteries in all parts of ancient Greece, 
 as well as modern Greece, including those of the 
 Princes Islands, were always built on elevations. 
 In this the modern Greeks copy their pagan 
 
MONA S TIC RLE VA TIONS. j j g 
 
 ancestors, who consecrated with temples the high- 
 est peaks. The Acropolis was always especially 
 honored. In fact, there are upon Mount Olympus 
 to-day, as well as upon Mount Ida, monasteries 
 whose cells are beautiful in their ruins. When 
 the snow melts upon Olympus there are traces of 
 the convents yet to be seen. 
 
 The inaccessibility of some of these monas- 
 teries is beyond description. There is one known 
 as the Convent of the Pulley. It is on the banks 
 of the Nile. You approach it through the rocks, 
 or rather you are received by the worthy brethren 
 who jump, one after another, into the Nile to 
 assist you to secure the boat with ropes and 
 anchors, so that you may scramble up the heights 
 with the aid of the blue-robed monks. 
 
 Sometimes these monasteries are reached not 
 without risk from, the brigands of the neighbor- 
 hood. Sometimes they are reached by. ascent 
 through hundreds of airy feet with the aid of 
 ropes. The idea of being hoisted into or near 
 heaven with the aid of fragile hemp is not alto- 
 gether unknown in our country to sentimental 
 sympathizers with martyrs who have been con- 
 victed of murder in the first degree. There is a 
 monastery on the Gulf of Corinth, under the 
 shadow of an overhanging precipice. There are 
 the monasteries of Meteora, and Mount Athos, 
 both remarkable for their wild inaccessibility. 
 
12Q THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 Many of the convents in Syria and the islands 
 of the archipelago are associated with those of 
 the Princes Islands, as unrivalled for the beauty 
 of their position and the splendor of their sur- 
 roundings. Besides, there are many others in 
 Bulgaria, Asia Minor, Sinope and other places 
 on the Euxine, which remain as curious monu- 
 ments of a wonderful era, when men sought exile 
 in strange places from the eventful social life. 
 Curzon, whose " Monasteries of the Levant " is 
 still read, found one in Persia, ensconced in the 
 fissures of a rock, with odd gardens adjoining the 
 buildings, displaying the horticultural intelligence 
 of the monks, the whole having the appearance of 
 a das relief against a wall. He calls it a large 
 swallow's nest. There are other hermitages of the 
 same description among the precipices of the Jor- 
 dan. These houses he studies, because they are 
 the most ancient specimens of domestic architec- 
 ture, next after the houses at Pompeii. Their an- 
 tiquity is illustrated by the monasteries on Mount 
 Sinai, at Cairo, at the head of the Euphrates, 
 and wherever the Greek faith prevailed. They 
 date back to the fifth and sixth centuries, with 
 contemporaneous relics, and crosses of rare work- 
 manship, illustrative of the peculiar art of those 
 early periods. 
 
 It is to be noted in this connection, that the 
 monasteries, especially those which are our neigh- 
 
ST. GEORGE AND FATHER ARSXNIUS. I2 i 
 
 bors on the Princes Islands, have undergone much 
 trial and trouble from the subjugation of the 
 Greek to the Mahometan. This has kept down 
 the splendor of the Church and oftentimes de- 
 stroyed the establishment itself. Many of these 
 monasteries were regarded as castles. Curzon 
 himself says, that once while dining inside one of 
 them he heard, even at his meals, and while the 
 brotherhood were reading homilies from St. 
 Chrysostom, shouts and shots fired against the 
 stout bulwarks of the walls by enemies from with- 
 out. Was not this in strange contrast with the 
 cadences of the good fathers within ? 
 
 But we have started to investigate St. George's 
 monastery, the most celebrated of those located 
 on the Princes Isles. 
 
 We are hospitably received by Father Arsen- 
 ius, who alone is in charge. He invites us to his 
 cool chambers in the second story of his monas- 
 tic domicile. The views through the large window 
 are far-reaching and splendid. He shows us the 
 images of his shrines in the old church. They 
 are black with the holy-candle smoke of centuries. 
 An old parchment Testament, illuminated, of the 
 year 600, is produced. It is his chief joy. It 
 is a volume quite worn. It was brought by Father 
 Arsenius from his old home in the Peloponnesus. 
 Its text is in the Greek. The illuminations in red 
 and blue indicate its antiquity and consequent 
 
122 TH E PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 sanctity. In the little chapel there are a half- 
 dozen pictures ; but the gold is tarnished, and the 
 flesh colors also dimmed with the sacred grime of 
 smoking candles. 
 
 The good father, with much courtesy of man- 
 ner and many inquiries about America, recognizes 
 the American minister as an " Excellency." He 
 invites us to see the holy spring. It is in a deep 
 chamber amidst the rocks. He gives us a drink 
 of its clear, cool water. Then we follow him to 
 a sombre room still below. This chamber has a 
 stony forbidding aspect. It is almost on the 
 rugged edge of a precipitous rock. It is, or was, 
 a retreat for the insane. There is only one 
 patient now. He is not there to receive us ; but 
 the iron rings, oxidized with time, are there, fixed 
 in the stone floor. This humble ferruginous 
 memento of the days when the crazed were 
 treated, worse than the criminal, excites much 
 interest. In vain we question the father about it. 
 He only knows his prayers and his illuminated 
 missals. Science, with its ameliorations, has not 
 to him any of the modern medicines for a mind 
 diseased. However, we do glean with the aid of 
 my Dalmatian, Pedro, who talks modern Greek 
 with the orthodox father, some hints of this asy- 
 lum. From these hints we evolve this story of the 
 convent : 
 
 The legend goes, that many years ago, a shep- 
 
LEGEND OF THE MONASTERY. I2 . 
 
 herd tending his flock on the summit, where the 
 monastery stands now, went to 1 sleep one hot 
 afternoon. In his sleep he has a dream. In the 
 dream he is advised to dig in a certain spot 
 close to where he is lying and "he would hear of 
 something to his advantage." He digs and finds 
 a horseman mounted on a beautiful white charger, 
 with bells hung round the animal's neck. The 
 horseman makes a behest to the sleeping shepherd. 
 
 He is enjoined to dig again, according to direc- 
 tions. He digs and finds an old picture. It rep- 
 resents exactly the horseman whom he had seen 
 in his dream, even to the bells round the horse's 
 neck. 
 
 A superstitious importance is attached to the 
 discovery. This is strengthened by the fact that 
 the shepherd, who previously was quite an im- 
 becile, the moment he touches the picture be- 
 comes possessed of the most extraordinary knowl- 
 edge in all matters. The picture is recognized. 
 It represents St. George. From the fact of the 
 bells round the horse's neck not being painted but 
 real bells, the picture, when it was discovered by the 
 shepherd, was and is still called "St. George of 
 the Bells." In consequence of the sudden change 
 which took place in the mental faculties of the 
 shepherd when he touched the picture, a popular 
 belief was engendered, and still prevails, that the 
 picture possesses healing qualities in respect to 
 
124 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 persons diseased in mind. That persons slightly 
 deranged, and more particularly hypochondriacs, 
 derive much benefit from a sojourn in this monas- 
 tery is a fact in support of which many examples 
 are cited. Its splendid position, bracing air and 
 regular diet, free from all excitement may have 
 more to do with the cure than the healing qual- 
 ities attributed to the picture. Where the picture 
 was discovered this church and subsequently the 
 monastery were built. 
 
 It is the view under the clear sky and tonical air 
 rather than the picture that we have climbed the 
 mountain to see. The distant view more than re- 
 pays for the exertion. Beneath is " a sea of glass 
 like unto crystal, which was before the throne." 
 The near view is as wild a spot as the imagination 
 could desire. Around and below are rocks piled on 
 rocks, gray granite rocks, somewhat red with iron- 
 rust, and amidst them various trees and shrubbery. 
 At one coup d'ceil we see the shores and isles. As 
 we gaze, the full moon rises out of Asia on the 
 south-east, and the full red and purple blaze of 
 the sinking sun makes its long shadows and mys- 
 tical lore in the west. Diana with her bow of 
 silver, and Apollo with his arrows tipped with 
 roseate light, brother and sister, unite to glorify 
 the isles, out of whose myths in ancient days rose 
 those Hellenic creations which the world has 
 accepted as aptly interpretative of nature ! 
 
CARNAL WEAPONS. I2 - 
 
 The good father bids us ascend to his reception- 
 room in the second story. As we ascend we pass 
 an open door and enter the ante-room. It looks 
 like a little arsenal. With the aid of my Dal- 
 matian interpreter, Pedro, I question the father, 
 pointing- to the three guns and a big cavalry 
 sword hanging against the wall : 
 
 " So you, like my servant's apostolic namesake 
 Peter, use carnal weapons upon these serene 
 heights of devotion ? " 
 
 The good father's eyes sparkle and snap. He 
 lifts off from the spike on the wall an American 
 Martini rifle. He opens its breach tubes. He 
 clicks it, with another snap of his Greek eye. 
 Then he responds with a smile : 
 
 "Yes, Excellence. We must be ready/ We 
 cannot tell in this lonely spot when we may be 
 attacked." 
 
 " But the sword, good Father Arsenius, what of 
 the sword ? Is it a relic of the ' Peloponnesiacum 
 Bellum ; ' or is it one of the evidences of your 
 ancient Spartan spirit and valor ? Is it an Ar- 
 chaian souvenir, or an Arcadian cheese-knife ? 
 Or is it an heirloom of your family out of the 
 more recent Greco-Turkish revolution ? " 
 
 He catches the raillery of my ironic talk. He 
 seizes the old sword. He handles it like an old 
 soldier of Macedon. With Spartan brevity he 
 rejoins : 
 
126 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 " Excellence ! It is good for bad heads." Point- 
 ing to the Bithynian coast, he adds : " Brigands 
 have been here from yonder shore ! " 
 
 It is indeed a lonely spot. The promontory, 
 extending out to the sea, further east on the isle, 
 was once a convenient resort for brigands from 
 the main land. There now lives, alone on its 
 extreme point, an old monk, who was formerly a 
 prodigious brigand chief from the mountains of 
 Asia. 
 
 In the monasteries of the Princes Islands the 
 old monkish establishments are obsolete. I be- 
 lieve that they in some sort are under the control of 
 the monks of Mount Athos. But from what I ob- 
 served in the monasteries at the Princes Islands, 
 the rigid rule against the admission of females is 
 not applied. Most of these monastic communities 
 debar all female creatures ; yet they have the poor 
 taste to allow within their precincts huge tom-cats. 
 These are procured from the outside, of course. 
 The communities are kept up by the admission of 
 members from without, and as some of the monks 
 have entered the monastery in early life, the image 
 of womankind has faded completely from their 
 memory. In fact, the question is often asked 
 outside as well as inside : " What sort of creatures 
 are women, anyhow?" 
 
 At Mount Athos not a female of any kind, not 
 a cow, nor a she-cat, nor a mare, nor a ewe, is 
 
HOSPITALITY OF THE MONK. 12 7 
 
 allowed within the sacred precincts. No female 
 is allowed to exist upon their sacred ground ; and 
 yet travellers have said and avouched that female 
 fleas live long enough here to breed, until the 
 nuisance becomes a positive martyrdom. These 
 pests are bred from the filth in the cells ; and the 
 dirty appearance of the monks indicates that they 
 assist this breeding. But nothing is so thor- 
 oughly sweet, elegant and clean as the monasteries 
 in and around Prinkipo, of which St. George of 
 the Bells is a chief ornament. 
 
 The good father invites us to his principal 
 chamber. It speaks of feminine neatness and per- 
 petual purity ; quite unlike the exclusive masculine 
 style of Mount Athos. Its dress is of white lace 
 on sofa and chair and at the windows. He orders 
 his hand-maiden to bring us refreshments. Along 
 with fresh water from the well below, she tenders 
 us on a silver salver a dish of conserve of roses. 
 You take a spoonful of this dainty dish, and dis- 
 solve its honeyed atomies with toothsome delight ; 
 then a draught of the cold water, followed by the 
 inevitable mocha in a tiny cup set in a silvery 
 fingan of filigree. Thus refreshed you look 
 around. The white walls are not altogether bare. 
 Here are pictures of St. George and the Dragon, 
 King George of Greece and his queen, the patri- 
 archs of the Orthodox Church and Abdul Mejid, 
 the liberal Sultan of twenty odd years ago. Here, 
 
I2 8 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 too, is Abdul Asiz, his son, on a gray charger, 
 passing in front of his soldiers. He dresses in 
 Turkish breeches of voluminous size now obsolete. 
 The Czars of Russia also depend from the white- 
 washed walls. Many cards of celebrities lie upon 
 a dish on the table. The dish is two feet in diam- 
 eter. It is decorated with a fine painting of the 
 Saviour and his apostles, and a verse in English 
 from Matthew xii., ist verse. It is a gift from an 
 English visitor. An ornate lantern of Turkish 
 make, the kind used by families on the dark 
 streets of Stamboul before gas or American pe- 
 troleum gave their light to the Orient, is upon 
 the table under the gay-colored chandelier. A 
 beautiful and large Easter egg, with a resplendent 
 picture of the Conception and Ascension on its 
 shell, hangs by blue virginal ribbons to the wall. 
 Is not blue the favorite color of the Immaculate 
 Mary ? This is a present from Rus'sia. A gilt 
 horseshoe hangs over a thermometer, and this com- 
 pletes the furniture of the reception room, where 
 our reverend "papa" in his long black gown and 
 rubicund visage, holds court. 
 
 We enjoyed many pleasant visits to the 
 monastery of St. George of the Bells. In none of 
 them, however, did we see the mounted horseman. 
 He doubtless was an illusion of some insane de- 
 votee or inmate of St. George. That saint always 
 appears as a cavalier. The bells are here, as they 
 
BEATING THE "SIMANDRO." 
 
ST. GEORGE OF THE BELLS. , 2 g 
 
 are on the other monasteries of the isles. The 
 clangor which is beginning to arouse protestations 
 against the use of bells in cities, has no reason 
 when applied to such a locality as this isle. The 
 vibrations and music of the monastery bells touch 
 tender chords of memory, and seem appropriate 
 to those ceremonies which awaken the best emo- 
 tions of our nature. While I was not impressed 
 with the magnitude of the arsenal of St. George, I 
 could not fail to moralize upon the incident in its 
 association with the bells. The morale took the 
 form of Longfellow's poem after looking at the 
 arsenal of Springfield. It was prompted by the 
 sound of the bell upon the distant monastery of 
 Christos, floating to us upon the still evening air 
 with solemn, sweet vibrations, which gave to the 
 poet's soul the voice of Him who was the Prince 
 of Peace. 
 
 When Mohammed II. captured Constantinople, 
 although he granted many privileges to the Greek 
 Church, he prohibited the use of bells. The bells 
 annoyed other populations ; but he allowed them 
 to be used in the churches and monasteries of the 
 Isles of the Princes. There they still remain. 
 These islands were then exclusively inhabited by 
 Greeks. No other people were disturbed by the 
 resonance of the bells. 
 
 There seems to have been much prejudice 
 among certain sects in the East against the use of 
 
 9 
 
130 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 bells. I have seen in Jerusalem a heavy resound- 
 ing oak board, which, being struck by a metallic 
 bar, calls the religionists to prayers. In the inte- 
 rior of the court of the old Greek monasteries, 
 there is often seen a monk who calls the congre- 
 gation to prayer, not as the Moslem does, from 
 the minaret with his shrill appeal to Allah, nor by 
 the bells which were permitted to remain upon 
 this island, but by a bit of board called the Siman- 
 dro, which is generally used instead of bells during 
 worship. 
 
 After a small contribution to the good father, 
 and many farewells, we mount our donkeys and 
 go home by the moonlight that now floods the 
 isle. It is too late to make a visit to the other 
 monastery. That is reserved for a promenade on 
 foot, as it is near our villa. 
 
 GREEK FATHER ARSENICS AND HIS SABRE. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE GREEK AND OTHER MONASTERIES OF THE 
 ORIENT. 
 
 IN a beautiful volume by Rose Elizabeth Cleve- 
 land, the 'sister of the President-, there is a 
 clever essay on the monastery. Aside from much 
 transcendental remark upon the cloistered life, the 
 essay has the merit of a succinct statement of 
 the rise and object of monachism. Miss Cleve- 
 land makes a contrast between the chivalric 
 and haughty soldier of the Middle Ages, and the 
 humble monk in sombre cowl and scanty^ gown 
 stiffened " by reason of his abstinence from the 
 sinful luxury of ablution." She calls these men 
 the aristocrats of society, the bulwark and orna- 
 ment of the church. Royalty bowed to them. 
 
 Her estimate is evidently taken from Gibbon's 
 chapters, and Gibbon's chapters have been toned 
 by his study of the Greek convents which played 
 so significant a part in the history of the " Decline 
 and Fall." The rise of this body of self-sacrific- 
 ing recluses shadows of the living amidst other 
 shadows she traces back to Antony of Egypt. 
 She fixes their locus in quo amidst the region of 
 
132 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 tombs and stone-covered caves filled with the 
 bones and dust of human skeletons. Therein was 
 their place of penitence. In strange contrast with 
 this picture were the elastic monastics of later 
 times, such as Walter Scott describes and such as 
 these isles knew in the time of their prosperity. 
 They were men of scholarly worth, and yet they 
 appreciated physical comfort. The Benedictines in 
 the Latin Church are praised for their general bene- 
 faction. They were the agents for the spread 
 of Christianity, civilization and learning in the 
 West, while penitential cloisters gave refuge to 
 the inherent monastic spirit which Miss Cleveland 
 classes among the natural diseases of mankind, 
 when carried to excess. She regards the rise 
 of these soul-hospitals as the result of an indeter- 
 minate feeling among men, hovering between the 
 old world of Paganism and the new one which 
 ushered in dimly the Christian faith. This is the 
 life Jerome followed and Chrysostom eulogized : 
 " Afar from the shadow of roofs and the smoky 
 dungeons of cities, came the mystic light from the 
 unseen world." 
 
 Miss Cleveland closes her paper with the en- 
 trance of Charles V. into the monastery and with 
 the divine pillar of Simeon. She comprehends in 
 her sketch a truthful, though I think an exagger- 
 ated view of the strangest institution to which 
 man ever consecrated his religious energy. These 
 
RELIGIOUS QUIETISM. j-,, 
 
 isles are full of the evidences of this cloistered 
 energy. When we visit Halki, Antigone and 
 Proti, we perceive better illustrations of it than 
 the Turks allowed to remain in Prinkipo. 
 
 The temperament of the Oriental tends to relig- 
 ious emotion and elevation of soul. It leads to 
 the different forms of mysticism which have pre- 
 vailed in the monastic life. There are various 
 names given to these monastic people. There is 
 one especially translatable. It is that of Quietist. 
 How far at the present time religious contempla- 
 tion forms a part of the life of the monk, has not 
 yet been revealed, and certainly not to the 
 tourists who visit the celebrated monasteries in 
 the East. Many enter the monastery because 
 when they become old and after a life somewhat 
 irregular, they desire to repent in solitude. Some 
 have been engaged in trade and have had disap- 
 pointments. A gentleman who visited Mount 
 Athos made inquiry and found that the love of 
 tranquillity, pure and simple, without any religious 
 enthusiasm, had overcome a grocer from Corfu, a 
 tailor from Byzantium, a merchant from Syria, a 
 sailor from Cephalonia and a leech-gatherer from 
 Larissa, in Thessaly ! One would surmise that 
 the last-named person would naturally feel disin- 
 clined to solitary contemplation ; for-there could 
 be nothing so haunting and horrible as the mem- 
 ory of blood-sucking ! 
 
134 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 The motive which impels so many to take the 
 monastic vow, and which they keep with great 
 fidelity in these Oriental monasteries, is the love 
 of tranquillity. This grows upon the devotee, like 
 any other habit. It is a great temptation for a 
 class of men to forsake the world, and find their 
 happiness in some hermitage, especially in a land 
 where there is so much balm and beauty of scen- 
 ery, and where the human kind brings so much 
 care and trouble. This class become weary of a 
 world where there is perpetual revolution in human 
 thought, and restless progress in human endeavor. 
 There is a great fascination for them to abide in 
 such a " laboratory of all the virtues," as Mount 
 Athos has been called. 
 
 There have been some, however, who have de- 
 generated after selecting these monasteries for 
 life. They return to the earth with its activities 
 and pleasures. I have in my mind the experience 
 of a German, who recanted before he entirely gave 
 his mind and vow to the work ; for, after reaching 
 Salonica from Mount Athos, he made a candid con- 
 fession. Although he had little care for the en- 
 joyments of this world, he had not elevated him- 
 self in the scale of righteousness by his secluded 
 life. When he returned to the flesh pots again, 
 how he devoured the political newspapers, maga- 
 zines and reviews! How hungrily he foraged in 
 the libraries of his consul ! Thus he demonstrated 
 
ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. j . 5 
 
 the emptiness of that life which was inside the 
 cloister, and which shrank from the heat and dust 
 of political and social activity. 
 
 It is nearly forty years ago since Curzon wrote 
 his "Visits to the Monasteries of the Levant." 
 It is a comprehensive book, and gives in detail all 
 that is worth knowing as to the architecture of the 
 monastic structures and the spirit of their recluses. 
 
 That which inspired his book was his collection 
 of ancient manuscripts. These he had picked up in 
 various out-of-the-way places in his travels. They 
 were of white vellum leaves. While admiring the 
 antiquity of one and the golden azure of another 
 manuscript, there arose memories and reflections 
 of the strange places from which they came and 
 the strange people from whom he obtained them. 
 He gives an account of the most curious of these 
 manuscripts and the adventures connected with 
 what he calls the pursuit of his venerable game. 
 Most of the monasteries which I have visited in 
 the Princes Isles have old manuscripts or antique 
 Scriptures. These are the first thing the monk 
 shows to the stranger. Besides the Holy Script- 
 ures, there are many writings which have been 
 composed within the precincts of the monastery. 
 They have reference to the rules of Christian life. 
 Some of them promulgate the doctrines of the he- 
 resiarchs, which in the early ages of the Church 
 created so much confusion and rancor. The 
 
136 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 author, Curzon, however, does not dwell so much 
 upon his trophied manuscripts. He grows elo- 
 quent by the contemplation of the picturesque and 
 superb natural situation of the monasteries. 
 
 He tells many curious stories about his mode 
 of procuring the rare manuscripts which he col- 
 lected in the Orient, many of which have been 
 placed in the British Museum. He travelled 
 many miles at great risk to find them. On one 
 occasion he was after a Syrian manuscript of great 
 value. It was alleged to be in an old monastery 
 in Egypt, near the Matron lakes. He took good 
 care to carry along with him some persuasive ele- 
 ments not recognized generally among the literary 
 amenities, but he was so anxious for the manu- 
 script and a Coptic dictionary of which he was in 
 pursuit, that he filled his carpet bag with some 
 bottles of rosoglio. This is a liqueur to which the 
 Orthodox Greek monks are partial. Many of the 
 monks even on Mount Sinai comfort themselves 
 with this spirit. It seemed to be potential, 
 more so than a golden fee. Curson gathers the 
 monks around him. He fills their cups with the 
 sweet, pink rosoglio, and the monks with much talk 
 about good-w r ill and humanity. Now Curzon 
 knows that there is a famous old crypt, in which 
 the manuscripts are kept. The monks have no 
 idea of the precious souvenirs below their cells ; 
 but at last, by social persuasion, they discover a 
 
CURZON 'S DISCO VERIES. l . ~ 
 
 narrov/, low door which enters a small closet. 
 This is the crypt. It is filled with manuscripts 
 to the depth of two feet. Lying there perdu are 
 the loose leaves of the Syrian manuscripts, which 
 now form one of the chief treasures of the 
 British Museum. 
 
 "Ah I at last!" he exclaims, " here is the 
 magic box! It is a heavy one." 
 
 The boozy monks shout out : 
 
 " A box ! A box ! Bring it out ! " 
 
 " Heaven be praised ! " they scream ; " we have 
 a treasure ! " 
 
 They pull out the box, and thus is resurrected 
 some most interesting manuscripts. They have 
 been buried in this ignoble literary grave for cent- 
 uries. Let the guild of letters drink bumpers to 
 Curzon, the literary detective of the ages, and 
 drink deep in the pink rosoglio ! 
 
 I have read a story of a famous monk, I think 
 he was of Alexandria. He belonged to the early 
 day, perhaps in the fourth century. He went 
 through all the austerities of the desert, and 
 wound up in one of the cells on the borders of the 
 Matron lakes. He was followed by many of his 
 faith. They lived separately, but they assembled 
 together on Sunday and had a sort of prayer meet- 
 ing. They were totally abstinent. A tourist gave 
 the saint a bunch of grapes. He sent it to another 
 brother; that other brother sent it to a third 
 
138 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 brother ; at last the grapes passed through the 
 hands of some hundreds, and came back to the 
 saint. He was happy in the abstinence of his 
 brethren, but he refused to eat himself. This was 
 the same saint who killed a gnat which was biting 
 him. It made him so unhappy that he retired to 
 a marsh where the flies had immense power, 
 equal to a Jersey mosquito, but he stood the in- 
 sectivorous infliction like a high-toned, chivalric, 
 middle-aged and manly monk. His body was so 
 much disfigured when he went back to the mon- 
 astery, that his brethren only knew him by his 
 voice ; and even his voice had a strange sound, 
 like that of a buzz-saw in motion. 
 
 One of the romantic legends which haunts the 
 neighborhood of the monastery on Mount Sinai 
 is that connected with the disappearance of a con- 
 vent. There is yet heard, between the Sinaite 
 mountains and the Gulf of Suez, the music of its 
 bells. It floats down on the breeze at the can- 
 onical hours. The Arabs declare that they have 
 been within the convent, but that the moment 
 they cross the threshold they lose sight of it. 
 The Bedouins have similar legends about other 
 convents. Some of these supposititious convents 
 are buried beneath the sand. Others have a bodi- 
 less hand, ringing the vesper bell. 
 
 On the top of Mount Sinai, which is scarcely 
 thirty paces in compass, there is not much room 
 
HERMIT HUNTING. J.Q 
 
 for any structural or musical performance. The 
 dignity of that mountain comes from another 
 source ! 
 
 Considering the beauty of this world, the love- 
 liness of its Tempes, the splendor of its Olympian 
 prospects, is it not strange that so many of our 
 kind creep into caves in their monastic fanaticism ? 
 The Orient especially has had whole flocks of 
 hermits roosting in pigeon holes upon the sides of 
 mountains. Some of these caves are so high and 
 some so far below the surface that we can only 
 liken the monks who live in one or the anchorites 
 who burrow in the other, to animals. In the time 
 of the Crusades, when the Saracen was roving 
 about the Eastern world, his favorite diversion 
 was hermit-hunting. In the early Greek frescoes 
 frightful representations of these chases are pict- 
 ured. The Saracen on horseback with long spear 
 punctures the monk and hermit. There is some- 
 thing heroic in this monastic constancy to a faith, 
 that never seems to be outworn, a constancy 
 which leaves home, riches, even thrones and all 
 mundane pleasures to seek for tribulation. These 
 men retire to the very dens of the earth, subject 
 themselves to cold and hunger and all the agonies, 
 trusting that their pain in this world may be their 
 felicity hereafter, and that those who bear the 
 cross to-day will wear the crown to-morrow. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 OUR NEIGHBORS OF THE CHRISTOS MONASTERY. 
 
 THE monasteries of our neighbors in Prinkipo 
 have but few monks. These seem almost entirely 
 engrossed with secular affairs. They look after 
 the lands and the funds. They make grain and 
 wine, and at the same time keep up their religious 
 exercises on proper occasions. If you would have 
 the monastic life of the East in all its fulness and 
 variety you will have to go to Mount Athos. 
 There you find about three thousand monks, not 
 to speak of a population of seculars who reside in 
 the vicinity and who may amount to three thou- 
 sand more. There are many monasteries, the 
 monks of which vary from twenty-five to three 
 hundred. It is very difficult for a stranger to 
 obtain accurate information as to these figures. 
 The Greek is not a statistician. He answers no 
 question with facility and satisfaction. If you ask 
 him a question, as I have asked the monks on this 
 island, his answer invariably is, " Nobody knows," 
 or to put it in the Greek, Hoeot; rb l^eu^e. The truth 
 is, nobody here cares an obolus about the antiquities 
 or history of the monasteries, or their imperial 
 
 140 
 
PROMENADE TO CHRISTOS MONASTERY 
 
 141 
 
 founders. The modern Greek priest cares as 
 little for that of which we inquire as he does for 
 Homer and his divinities. Let us, however, try 
 the experiment of inquisition with our nearest 
 neighboring monastery. 
 
 Within half a mile of our villa, up the moun- 
 tain, is the monastery of Christos. It is being 
 rebuilt. It is not so old as the others upon the 
 isles, but the structure is more extensive and 
 stately. It has a revenue as well from the Greek 
 orthodox establishment as from its tillable land. 
 There are a half dozen monks who attend to the 
 gardens and raise the grapes and make the wine, 
 which is the favorite vin du pays of the isles. They 
 purchase grapes in large quantities from the Asian 
 vineyards, which lie in a southerly and easterly 
 exposure over the long range of land across the 
 channel. 
 
 To this monastery is my morning walk. There 
 is a half-way place under the broad sheltering 
 arms of the pines, where a score or more of people 
 can rest on a circle of stone seats. From here you 
 can look down into the Alpine vale below, covered 
 with vineyards, figs, olives and cypresses. To 
 complete the sylvan scene the pine forests skirt 
 this valley. On reaching its top, on the right and 
 among the pines, are a dozen splendid tombs. 
 They are walled up on the side of the hill near the 
 monastic group of buildings. Here the rich and 
 
1 4 2 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES, 
 
 the notable are buried. The crown on their monu- 
 ments indicates rank and station. Here are the 
 tombs of the patriarchs of the church. 
 
 As I wend my way up to the monastery upon 
 this quiet Sabbath day, I find a freshly laid circlet 
 of rare flowers upon one of these monuments. It 
 is a new monument, made since we have lived 
 here. In the shadow of the trees fronting the 
 monastery are a dozen or more of elegant carriages 
 and dog-carts, with liveried drivers. Something 
 unusual is going on. I enter the alley that leads to 
 the church, pass between the line of beggars hold- 
 ing out their boxes for piasters. There is a crowd 
 of peddlers selling bread, in rings a foot in 
 diameter. This bread has the look of pretzels. 
 They are piled artistically, ring on ring, upon huge 
 platters carried upon the heads of the venders, 
 or are placed upon tripods. The bread is called 
 simits. The picture will show the vender. I 
 enter the church. It is commodious and full of 
 people of all classes. Where could they come 
 from, and so early? From the village a mile or 
 more below ? I suppose so. There is a sweet 
 canticle being sung by trained boys. Is there a 
 funeral ? I see no coffin and no corpse ; for at 
 Greek funerals the body is exposed in the coffin. 
 Many large candles are aflame ; and many of the 
 people, especially those in elegant toilet, hold 
 smaller lighted tapers. A bishop in full canonicals, 
 
VENDER OF SIMITS. 
 
MASSES FOR THE DEAD. I43 
 
 crozier in hand, and a hat gorgeous with gold, and 
 a stole of most beautiful satin with gold em- 
 broidery, enters the pulpit. Around him stand 
 other priests, some in purple robes, some in their 
 plain black dresses, all with the strange black hat 
 whose crown is rimless, save at its top ! The 
 chant is taken up by the priests. The candles 
 are decorated with white and black ribbons. 
 Many of the visitors are in mourning. Some are 
 weeping ; but it is not a funeral. It is the cus- 
 tomary mass for the souls of the dead. It is usual, 
 as I learn, forty days after death to have such 
 ceremonies when the family can afford it. The 
 chant ends. The flowers are carried out to the 
 tomb, and with them three large mysterious bas- 
 kets. These baskets are draped in crape ; and rib- 
 boned with white and black. I follow the crowd 
 of villagers and peasants who throng about the 
 tomb. Here the baskets are emptied. Each per- 
 son rushes pell-mell to obtain some of the contents 
 of the baskets. These contain flour, boiled simply 
 with water and salt. Some eat portions on the 
 spot. The women fill their handkerchiefs with it 
 and the boys their hats. All struggle and almost 
 fight over the sacred emblem, which has been 
 blessed. It is a curious ceremony. When done, 
 the parties immediately interested re-enter their 
 vehicles. The gentlemen light their cigarettes. 
 Much bustle ensues. The soul of the departed is 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 supposed to be quiescent and pacified ! Not- 
 withstanding the solemnity of the sweet music and 
 that the candles are beautifully symbolic of the 
 reillumination of the soul, and despite the old 
 pictures of the Saviour, the Virgin and the saints 
 with their golden aureoles and radiant glories, 
 which make the scene impressive, yet the finale 
 with the bread and the mob of folk 'who rush to 
 eat and bear it off, is not consonant with the 
 solemn beauty of the ceremony and scene. 
 
 The Greek congregation is not particularly 
 reverent, although the rites are ceremonious. 
 I cannot but feel that in their devotion they 
 have not intensely the religious feeling or emo- 
 tion. I have before me a statement which con- 
 firms my remark : A lady visits one of these 
 churches with a friend who is a Greek devotee. 
 The latter is a fashionable woman. She conducts 
 her friend in a courtly way around the church 
 during service, to look at the pictures of the port- 
 ly and sad-eyed martyrs. She lights a dozen 
 or more of tapers to show her pious zeal ; and 
 as she lights them, as the story is told, she hums 
 in an undertone the barcarolle in Masahiello, 
 muttering between the staves : 
 
 " The Virgin ! I shall give her four candles. Is 
 not my own name Mary? Look ! What a pretty 
 effect ! Note her gold hand and her silver crown 
 with the light flashing on them ! Now comes St. 
 
BEGGAR. 
 
IRREVERENCE IN CHURCH. j,- 
 
 George, I like St. George. He shall have two 
 candles. Who is this? Oh ! St. Nicholas; I can- 
 not bear St. Nicholas. I shall pass him by ! " 
 
 Her companion ventures to intercede in favor 
 of St. Nicholas. 
 
 tl Very well, then ! As you wish it ! There is 
 one candle for him ! but he never was a favorite 
 of mine ! There are two saints in the calendar to 
 whom I never burn a taper, St. Nicholas and St. 
 Demetrius." 
 
 It is not to be ignored that in the church cere- 
 monies there is need of some gentle warder. 
 What with the bowing and the whispering and 
 the laughing and the fidgeting of those who are 
 gathered in a Greek church; what with the lat- 
 tices of the gallery where even yet in some places 
 the females are shut as it were in a prison, and the 
 chanting of the priests in some sort of reckless 
 music, there is not enough to attract the ear with 
 sweetness and gentleness, or to impress the be- 
 holder with veneration. Ah ! I forget the gor- 
 geous stoles of the priests. The clergy seem to 
 hold the Eastern Greek in thrall by their superb 
 attire. So it is with the head-dress of the priests. 
 The very hair upon the head of the Greek priest 
 has a patriarchal air. It may, like a crucifix, or a 
 torch, or a sacred candle, give an added solemnity 
 to the scene. Perhaps it is known to the reader 
 that the Greek priests are not permitted to use 
 
 10 
 
146 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 either razor or scissors. They can only reduce 
 their beard by plucking it out. This is an old 
 Jewish law. They do this plucking with such skill 
 as to make their locks look elegant without being 
 too abundant. In part they resemble our Amer- 
 ican Indians, who pluck their beard from their 
 faces, though they never worship God by tearing 
 their hair. I have seen some of the Greek priests 
 who must have omitted this species of martyrdom, 
 as their back hair was done up in coifs after the 
 feminine fashion. The Greek priests have a 
 splendid physique, from which even their feminine 
 head attire does not detract. 
 
 A stranger in a strange land, almost unnoticed 
 except by the beggar who asks alms of me, I 
 pursue my way after the ceremonies of Christos 
 church, to the Diaskalon, the Greek name for 
 the grand plateau and restaurant. The flags 
 of all the nations deck its central pavilion. 
 Scattered at various elevations are these same 
 funereal people at the tables and chairs under 
 the pines. They are inhaling the aromatic 
 pleasures which mingle with the fumes of the 
 coffee and tobacco ; and therewithal the recent 
 mourners of the church are solacing themselves. 
 
 From beneath the wooded coverts we catch 
 glimpses of the bluest of seas and the clearest of 
 skies, broken by the mountains on the mainland 
 and isles, whose grandeur never ceases to attract 
 
IMA GER Y IN GREEK CHURCHES. 
 
 the vision. Resting here, I reflect on the strange- 
 ness and remoteness of the scenes of the morn- 
 ing. They are a curious blending of classic Pa- 
 ganism with Christian rites. The very crosier of 
 the Patriarch, with its eagle and serpent is copied 
 from the bdton of Jove, and a hundred incidents 
 remind me rather of the Hellenic mythology than 
 of the monastic and Christian life which is here 
 professed. 
 
 The Greek church and ceremony which I had the 
 pleasure to observe at Christos did not please 
 me as much as the mosque and its ceremony. 
 The mosque has a simplicity of beauty. The 
 Greek church has its altar, which is separated from 
 the church by a screen, but it has neither aisles nor 
 side chapels. The screen is ornamented, as is the 
 church, by pictures of saints. Shade of Raphael ! 
 What pictures! How hard, dry and horrible they 
 look. The Greek Church will not have images, it 
 is said. Surely these pictures are the likenesses 
 of nothing in heaven, or on earth, or in the waters 
 under the earth. No Catholic in Spain would 
 have dreamed of decorating his favorite saint 
 with such votive offerings. Besides, the decora- 
 tions in gold and silver on hands, eyes, ears and 
 nose give such a comical effect, that the beholder 
 only enjoys it as the caricature of art, and not as 
 an aid to religion. 
 
 Many of the pictures that I have seen in the 
 
148 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 Greek and Coptic churches, and many of the man- 
 uscripts, are adorned with grim painted illumina- 
 tions. They are from colors composed of various 
 ochres. The outlines are first drawn with a pen 
 or brush made by chewing the end of a reed 
 until it is reduced into filaments. This pen is 
 then nibbled into proper form, after the ancient 
 Egyptian method. With this ceed, or pen, the de- 
 votee fills up the spaces between the etchings with 
 his colors. The Virgin is generally dressed in 
 blue ; the other figures are of a brownish red, and 
 they all have a curious cast in the eye. The ar- 
 tistic work is hardly equal to that of the ancient 
 Greek or of the modern Italian, but yet many of 
 the oldest churches and some of the rarest books; 
 of the Old and New Testaments, as well as the 
 manuscripts of many classic works have thus been 
 glorified by much rude art. 
 
 The ceremony of blessing the grapes, to which 
 I have referred, is another example of classic 
 reminiscence ; nor is it confined to the Ortho- 
 dox Greek church. There is a Catholic Armenian 
 church in the village of Prinkipo. Upon one 
 Sunday morning we were invited to be present 
 to witness the same ceremony in that beautiful 
 church. The church was arrayed with all the 
 flowers of the season. An immense basket of 
 grapes stood upon the gorgeous altar. The Patri- 
 arch, who is a brother of the Armenian banker, 
 
CLASSIC CEREMONIES. T ,Q 
 
 Azarian, conducted the services. It was a touch- 
 ing and reverent recognition of the kindly gifts of 
 God. But, after all, is it not taken from the simi- 
 lar ancient Greek ceremonies which were intended 
 to honor Bacchus, who " first from out the purple 
 grape crushed the sweet poison of wine " ? The 
 great world, as Tennyson has it, may spin forever 
 down the ringing grooves of change, but how 
 much of the changeless remains ! The very 
 images of Greek beauty in feature are here, wor- 
 shipping the god of the vine, in the church of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 " Vulgar parents cannot stamp their race 
 With signatures of such majestic grace." 
 
 The priest of Apollo stands confessed at the 
 altars of Prinkipo ! 
 
 The Greeks have a good deal to answer for. 
 Their faults are numerous, but they are superficial. 
 As in other nations, so among the Greeks, the 
 scum rises and is prominent. The timeo Danaos 
 and the wooden horse have demoralized them in 
 history. 
 
 The Greek is not to be confounded with the Le- 
 vantine. The latter is a mixed race, from Italy, 
 Malta, France and other western lands. The 
 Levantines are Franks and so called. They are 
 born of the early adventurers from the time of the 
 Crusades to that of the Crimean war. 
 
J^Q THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 There is much to be said about the religious 
 devotion of the Greeks in association with these 
 monastic isles and structures. I know that they are 
 reproached for their weakness and their indiffer- 
 ence, when their empire was crumbling, before the 
 Latin conquest, led by the Fourth Crusade under 
 Dandolo and Baldwin. It is said by Mr. Pears, in 
 his history, that while the Moslem was thundering 
 at the walls of Stamboul and when the city was 
 again about to succumb, that the Greeks of the 
 hierarchy were disputing about non-essential arti- 
 cles of their faith and doctrine. The empire of 
 the Greek fell, but his faith lives. It will not 
 be disputed but that he has an ineradicable love 
 of liberty worthy of his lineage. Nor will he rest 
 until the Hellenic race is enfranchised. But how 
 can we reconcile the condition of his church and the 
 Ottoman state in Turkey to-day ? The Greek 
 rayak y as yet, is a strviteur of the Sultan. He 
 wears the red fez. It is the badge of subjection. 
 He seems to wear it willingly. He is ready to 
 take office whether as Vali of a province or Cai- 
 makam of a district, as minister of state or grand 
 vizier, and when his sons are dubbed as Beys and 
 Effendis they eagerly seek position and promotion 
 in the offices of the government. His blue Fanar- 
 iote blood runs through a line of linguists, states- 
 men, diplomats and soldiers, celebrated as the 
 favorite servants of the Ottoman Sultans. 
 
GREEK AND LA TIN CHURCHES. { 5 f 
 
 Nor is this more marvellous to those who read 
 the stories of the Greek revolution than the or- 
 thodoxy of the Greek Church, which in Turkey 
 is content to be the subordinate imperium, with its 
 Patriarch, under the Imperial Majesty enthroned 
 at Yilcliz and supreme at the Sublime Porte ! 
 
 Perhaps we do the race of Leonidas and De- 
 mosthenes injustice. But after observing recent 
 events in Turkey, it may be said that if the Greek 
 people of Turkey five millions strong are wait- 
 ing for the palingenesis, or new birth, they did not 
 show it when Bulgaria raised the sword to cut the 
 Gordian knot of the Berlin treaty, in September, 
 1885. The Greek ray ah was then a helpful sub- 
 ject of the Ottoman. 
 
 The distinguishing feature between the Latin 
 and the Greek churches should be understood. 
 The very word " orthodox " presumes on the part of 
 the Greek a fundamental, dogmatical difference. 
 That difference lies in the rejection by the Greek 
 of what is known as the double procession of the 
 Holy Ghost. The Greek, and following it the 
 Russian Church, repudiates as an interpolation 
 the word filioque, in the creed of the Council of 
 Constantinople of A.D. 381. The Greek went 
 further and charged five heresies against the Lat- 
 in. They are enumerated in the sentence of 
 excommunication pronounced by the Patriarch 
 against Pope Nicholas I. These heresies include : 
 
^ THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 First. The doctrine that the Holy Ghost pro- 
 ceeds from the Son as well as from the Father. 
 
 Second. The practice of the Latin Church of 
 fasting on the Sabbath. 
 
 Third. Its sanction of the use of milk and food 
 prepared from milk in the first week of Lent. 
 
 Fourth. Its prohibition of priests from marrying. 
 
 Fifth. Its withholding from presbyters and 
 bishops the right to baptize persons with the Holy 
 Chrism" 
 
 Sixth. The use of unleavened bread in the 
 Eucharist. 
 
 And as the sweeping conclusion, a repudiation 
 of the papal claim of supremacy. 
 
 Another thing may be said for the Greek 
 Church. It never claimed, like the Latin, any 
 measure of temporal authority ; only spiritual juris- 
 diction. But this was more in theory than practice. 
 
 If I were to seek for the glory of Greece, I 
 would not go to the Acropolis ; nor to Thermopy- 
 lae ; nor to the art of Phidias and Appelles ; nor to 
 the ancient theatre or the modern chamber where 
 Deleyani and Tricoupis debate ; but to their he- 
 roic adherence to their orthodox faith. Whether 
 that faith be pure or impure, whether its Protes- 
 tantism is better than that of Wickliffe, Huss, 
 Luther, or Calvin ; whether it was wise or not 
 in its times of trouble, when Polycarp died, or 
 Byzantium' fell it has been consistent and heroic 
 
IECUMEN1CAL PATRIARCH DEMETRIUS V. 
 
GREEK ECCLESIASTICAL HEROISM. l ^ 
 
 even unto death, under tremendous stress of cir- 
 cumstances, and amidst the fiercest fires of perse- 
 cution. Five hundred years before Wickliffe 
 seven hundred before Luther the Greeks main- 
 tained against all comers their orthodoxy and 
 primitive doctrines and early practices. The New 
 Testament came to all Christians in their opulent 
 tongue. The Nicene creed, that settled as early 
 as A.D. 325, the Arian controversy as to the Trinity 
 for all Christendom, came out of the first (Ecumen- 
 ical synod of over 300 Greek bishops under the 
 presidency of a Greek bishop of Spain. The 
 Greek Church " safe-guarded the Niceno-Constan- 
 tinopolitan, Ephesian-Chalcedonian symbol of the 
 Trinity " in the form left by the fourth (Ecumenical 
 synod. What contests it has had in its own 
 bosom ! what struggles with Caliph and Pope ! 
 what persecutions from Saracen ! what contempt 
 from Protestantism ! But it has never yielded to 
 the edicts of power, the force of arms or the flames 
 of persecution. Enduring all the tribulations of 
 martyrdom and the contumely of arrogance, it is 
 still a living evidence of Christian faith ; and 
 these isles have witnessed as they look out toward 
 Chalcedon and Nicaea, the scholarship and devo- 
 tion of an intrepid race of ecclesiastical heroes. 
 If the orthodoxy of the Greek is a petrified re- 
 ligion, it is a petrifaction which is monumental. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 TRIP TO HALKI, ISLE OF COPPER GREEK COLLEGES 
 
 SPLENDID SCENERY. 
 
 ONE of the pleasures of our summer resort at 
 Prinkipo, after donkey-riding, fishing, promenad- 
 ing and inhaling the health-giving air, is to make 
 trips to the adjacent mainland and isles, even to 
 the ecclesiastical vicinage of Nicsea, and the his- 
 toric places of Nicomedia. These latter places are 
 eastward, upon the two extreme points of the Sea 
 of Marmora. They are only separated from each 
 other by a mountainous tongue of land, a tongue 
 which speaks eloquently of a mighty past ! The 
 voyage can be made in a sailing caique, in a 
 launch, or by the post boat. It can be made in a 
 day. It is hardly fifty miles to Ismid, or Nico- 
 media. It is a longer trip to Nicaea, now known 
 as Isnid, which can be better made via Broussa, 
 when the brigands are asleep. Isnid is the 
 famous locality where the Nicene creed and its 
 controversies made war a chronic habit in the 
 early days of Christianity. We are projecting 
 several of these trips. 
 
 This morning is dedicated to Halki. It is the 
 
 154 
 
ROSY AURORA. 
 
 Sabbath. No more beautiful day ever dawned 
 in the East than that which ushers in this bright 
 morning. The sea is of the deepest ultramarine 
 blue with stretches of light in swaths that break 
 its uniformity of color. A little breeze ruffles 
 its surface. A few white-winged caiques move 
 quietly, seeming to be more at rest than in mo- 
 tion. The clouds make shadows over the moun- 
 tains. The slopes of Asia, east and south, are 
 magical in beauty. The roseate aurora of which 
 Homer sings, hardly fades from the lustrous 
 glory of the sky before we are off to Halki, the 
 isle of copper. It lies just west of us, only a 
 mile distant. It is within our view from Prinkipo. 
 It has two prominent main-tops of mountains, each 
 crowned with large yellow buildings. One is a 
 Greek commercial college, and the other a Greek 
 theological seminary. Our launch, the " Sunset," 
 is ready. The Maltese captain and his crew 
 are unusually affable. They are cultivating their 
 best graces ; for on coming up from Stamboul 
 yesterday we had a breezy time around the Moda 
 Point, and our new flag blew away, and they 
 looked as if they were under the patriotic ban. 
 Alas! that this, the only emblem of the great 
 Western republic now on these waters, should 
 have had such an inglorious burial in the Pro- 
 pontis. Who will find it? Who return it? 
 Who will know it ? The other day, while stand- 
 
156 
 
 THE PRTNCES ISLES. 
 
 ing on the quay, as the " Kearsarge " first entered 
 Prinkipo harbor, I heard a talk among the fisher- 
 men about its " drapeau" They spoke in Greek ; 
 but Pedro, my Dalmatian servant, translates. 
 Said one : 
 
 " The Greeks have colored their blue stripes, 
 and changed them to red since their late fiasco 
 with Turkey. It is a Greek ship." 
 
 " Oh, no," said his companion ; " it is the tri- 
 color of the French red, white and blue, mod- 
 ified with the stars." 
 
 " Nay, not so," said a third : " there is a new 
 nation in Africa and it is sending out vessels. 
 This is the flag of the Congo Confederation ! " 
 
 No one dreams that a nation of sixty millions 
 swear by this starry ensign, and that the " Kear- 
 sarge" had vindicated it under the eye of antago- 
 nizing British and curious French people, off 
 Cherbourg. 
 
 This flag is beginning to be known here by its 
 " Sunset " coloring, which Drake sang so vividly 
 and which our launch illustrates eo nomine. So 
 that when we reach the scala, or landing, we 
 have a greeting from all the fishermen and other 
 ,ftt*/a-wags who adorn the quay. The steam is 
 already up ! Away we dash for the Copper Isle ! 
 
 Our little launch is filled with pots of flowers, 
 and with our blue flag at the fore, signifying that 
 the ministerial " Admiral," is on board, our 
 
mem 
 
THE GREA T DRA COM AN. l * ~ 
 
 old star-spangled banner at the stern, rather the 
 worse for wear, and our gay scarlet cushions on 
 deck, we make a sensation as we move over the 
 sea not at all inglorious for our remote country. 
 
 This island of Halki derives its name from the 
 copper mines which in ancient times existed in 
 it halkos (yatobs), ifl Greek meaning copper. The 
 Turks call it Heibely, that is, bag-like ; because of 
 the resemblance of the two hills on either side of 
 its principal plain to saddle-bags thrown across 
 the back of a horse. 
 
 There is little to add to the description of the 
 monasteries on this island given in " lies des 
 Princes," excepting one or two slight errors to 
 correct. The author of that book speaks of the 
 personage who restored in 1680 the monastery of 
 the Virgin Mary as " Nicosios Panagiotaki." It 
 makes him a native of Scio, old Homer's isle ; 
 whereas his proper name is Panagiotaki of Nico- 
 sia, in Cyprus. The American reader will be 
 happy to know that he was the great dragoman of 
 the Sultan, when dragomans were more distin- 
 guished and less common than at present. They 
 will also be pleased to know that he was not from 
 Scio, but from Cyprus. In the library of this 
 monastery are to be found some fifty or sixty old 
 manuscripts, mostly relating to ecclesiastical mat- 
 ters, written on parchment and dating as far back 
 as the sixth century. 
 
158 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 In a remote part of Halki lived, up to four years 
 ago, an old monk. A certain mystery was at- 
 tached to him. He was formerly a wealthy mer- 
 chant and a highly respected member of society. 
 One day, about thirty years ago, he left his house 
 in Pera, in the morning as usual, to go to his busi- 
 ness. He did not, however, make his appearance 
 at his counting-house that day and did not return 
 home in the evening, in fact, he did not return at 
 all. Inquiries were made. About a month after- 
 wards he was discovered in a retired spot of Halki. 
 There he had built for himself with his own hands 
 a wooden hut and was living in it, having assumed 
 the garb of a monk. Neither the solicitations of 
 his wife, children or friends could induce him to 
 return to his home or explain his strange conduct. 
 He sent them all away. He lived for nearly 
 twenty-five years in that hut, subsisting on herbs 
 and presents from charitable people. Money he 
 would not accept, but bread and other perquisites 
 he did not refuse. He spent his time in study 
 and prayer. Of late years he was held in great 
 veneration by the -inhabitants of the isle. When 
 he retired to Halki, he left behind him an excel- 
 lent business and a fortune of nearly $100,000. 
 
 Why anticipate these incidents ? They make 
 Halki interesting. My portfolio is crowded with 
 memoranda of this historic and monastic isle. 
 They concern its three monasteries, its commercial 
 
SECKE TS OF HALKI. l - g 
 
 school, its natural position in the sea and its 
 paradisiacal beauty and situation. What convents ! 
 what tombs ! what buried patriarchs ! What 
 biographies associated with the Paleologii John 
 VIII. especially ! What ravages by fire and war! 
 What grandeur of Greek dragomans, like the 
 famous Nicosias Panagiotaki ! What funereal 
 corteges by sea ! what Phanarotic ability ! These 
 added to the natural beauties of the isle, transmute 
 the copper of Halki into the golden ingots of his- 
 tory and chivalry. 
 
 The time is propitious to search for the secrets 
 of Halki. Every page of Gibbon calls aloud. 
 The round tower of the Genoese beckons ! A 
 thousand years, eloquent of historic glory, almost 
 forgotten by our new hemisphere years in which 
 eunuchs, emperors, empresses, patriarchs, clerical 
 and domestic, local and foreign wars, come and 
 go like rainbows. These all invite us to study 
 Halki ! 
 
 We had arranged to have with us Admiral 
 Woods Pasha. He is an English gentleman, 
 formerly of the English navy. For the past 
 twenty years he has been in the Turkish naval 
 service, and has reached, for a young man, quite 
 an exalted place in the service. For several 
 years he was a professor in the naval school at 
 Halki. Since the Turks have been threatened re- 
 cently with disintegration, he is expected there 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 again to lecture on explosives, torpedoes, and naval 
 warfare generally. In these matters he is peer- 
 less as a student and accomplished as a practical 
 officer. To him Halki is an open book. For him 
 all its pretty bays, nooks, and paths, its monu- 
 ments and monasteries, its social, historic and per- 
 sonal memories serve to illuminate the open vol- 
 ume. His sister accompanies us. She speaks 
 modern Greek, and interprets for us. The Admi- 
 ral Pasha speaks Turkish like a native. 
 
 We reach the isle. We land on the scala, at 
 the door almost of the naval college. The marines 
 perceive the Admiral, for he wears the undress 
 uniform of his rank. They make salutation as 
 we enter the gateway of the huge building. Like 
 most of the monster buildings in the East it is 
 painted yellow. It was used once as a cazerne or 
 barracks. As a consequence there is a mosque 
 near by. This is signified by the white minaret. 
 It is vacation in the college now. We find, as is 
 the case in all edifices public and private, in this 
 country that the inside of the college and grounds 
 is more inviting than the outside indicates. We 
 find ourselves, under the convoy of a Turkish 
 naval officer, within grounds laid out with great 
 beauty, but in a neglected condition. Flowers, 
 creepers, rare shrubbery, and trees, make a picture 
 none the less interesting, because en ddshabille. 
 The Admiral Pasha relates many tales of these 
 
RE VELS A T HALKI. 
 
 grounds. These tales relate to the days of Mah- 
 moud II., who massacred the Janissaries. That 
 Sultan used to come here from the capital to have 
 a revel, sending for the attractive beauties of the 
 isle and making merry like an old feudal lord of 
 the manor. His son, Abdul Mejid, was also accus- 
 tomed to visit here for days together, but not in 
 such a hilarious fashion. Abdul Mejid's son, Ab- 
 dul Hamid, the present Sultan, has never been here. 
 
 The grounds are in sad decay. The naval cus- 
 todian tells us that this year a sum is set apart for 
 the renovation of the grounds and buildings. 
 
 We enter the building. There is nothing to 
 note except large rooms with furniture once rich, 
 now faded, and chandeliers that would do honor 
 to Dolma Batche or Peterhoff. 
 
 " Here is the chamber," says the Admiral, 
 "where, on the visit of the allied fleets after the 
 Crimean war, we gave the allied officers a grand 
 fete and heavenly dance. Did you note these 
 rude pillars unpainted on the first floor ? Well, 
 I had them put under the floor to support the 
 dancers. It was done in a few hours on a hasty 
 summons." 
 
 "By you?" I ask. 
 
 " By my orders ! The timber was prepared in 
 Stamboul, brought down here in the afternoon, set 
 up in style before night, and we danced over it till 
 morning ! How's that ? " 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 " I did not think, Admiral, that the Turks were 
 so energetic." 
 
 " Oh ! they are great on spirts, when the ' occa- 
 sion sudden ' demands exertion." 
 
 As it is vacation no students assemble to gratify 
 their curiosity at our unexpected advent. When 
 my Dalmatian, Pedro, signifies that he desires a 
 half-dozen donkeys to be ready on our return from 
 seeing the naval school, we are surrounded by a 
 bevy of young Greeklings, Arabs I was about to 
 say, of the town. They do not use suspenders ; 
 sometimes they have a sash or belt like their 
 elders. Their pantaloons may be said to be like a 
 doubtful bill after a field day in Congress, full 
 of amendments amendments in front and rear. 
 Some are so much covered with patches as to 
 be a " substitute," leaving only the title ! These 
 gamins are not badly behaved. I am yet to see 
 any bad boy among the Greeks. When Pedro 
 indicates a wish for donkeys, a race begins for the 
 remote donkey stand. It is Epaminondas against 
 Lycurgus Eschines over again for the crown 
 against Demosthenes. Around the corner come 
 the gamins with four donkeys and a horse ! I 
 mount the horse. The steed is fiery. Our sailor 
 George and servant Pedro assist us to mount. 
 Away we go ! We had become used to gaping, 
 curious crowds while in Egypt ; so that when the 
 
REBELLION A GAINST CA RRIA GES. j 5 n 
 
 housewives of the town rush to their windows to 
 gaze at our procession, we are not embarrassed. 
 
 " Which way shall we go?" I ask the Admiral. 
 " Up the magnificent avenue of cypresses, which 
 takes us to the oldest monastery ?" 
 
 He responds : 
 
 " Let us reserve that to the last." 
 
 No carriages are allowed in Halki. The only 
 locomotion is by foot or donkey. Some years ago 
 the attempt was made to introduce carriages, as the 
 roads are suitable for them ; but the very donkeys, 
 together with their drivers, raised a thundering 
 note of rebellion. The harness of the new regime 
 of drivers was cut, the vehicles disordered, and the 
 scheme abandoned. In Prinkipo the same sort 
 of revolution failed. The private carriages tri- 
 umphed, and there was no power in the don- 
 key battalions against the gold of the Hellenic 
 bankers. 
 
 Halki plumes herself on her freedom from 
 the aristocratic carriage. Her paths are paths 
 of peace, and her ways are ways of pleasant- 
 ness. In fact, there is a quietude and beauty 
 about her solitary meandering walks that make 
 her more attractive to the monastic or studious 
 mind than her more fashionable sister isle. 
 
 We take up our line of march to the lofty top of 
 the mountain, where the theological seminary with 
 its piles of yellow-painted stone and beautiful, 
 
!64 THE PRINCES ISLES 
 
 ample grounds give the finest view of the islands 
 and the two continents. 
 
 I have said that it was difficult to find any litera- 
 ture concerning these isles outside of the modern 
 Greek. This I cannot read. But one capital 
 object is always apparent without seeking other 
 than tablets of stone set in mortar ; and that is 
 the prevalence of religious enthusiasm as associ- 
 ated with these isles. The monastery is ever up- 
 permost. It was quite as convenient for the state, 
 as a prison and refuge, as for the church to per- 
 petuate Greek teaching and tenets. These tenets 
 are especially saturated with the reclusive life. No 
 place in the Eastern World, unless it be Mount 
 Athos, is so fitted for the solitary musings and reflec- 
 tions of the cenobite as these isles. There is no 
 place so fitted, I may add, for the anchorite also. 
 Both words are as Greek as the habits of the 
 Greek fathers of the Christian Church. The word 
 cenobite is from Kocub^ common ; and /&oc, life. It 
 signifies a community, in opposition to the anchor- 
 ite, who was a solitary hermit, from avd, back, 
 and to Xoffee^ retire. 
 
 This isle of Halki is the home of both of these 
 recluses. This the sequel will show. It is an il- 
 lustration of the excesses of that pious zeal, which 
 led the early fathers to retire into caves and con- 
 vents, as if in the very face of the teachings of 
 
ST. TRINITY CONVENT. 
 
 165 
 
 Him whom all confess, who sought to be affable 
 and social in his intercourse with mortals. 
 
 The convent of St. Trinity, most conspicuous 
 from land and sea, is the one within whose courts 
 we now are. It used to graduate yearly two 
 hundred students, for the Orthodox priesthood. 
 The past year there were but sixty-seven grad- 
 uates. Is this a sign of our utilitarian age, which 
 is even invading this great theological centre of 
 Oriental orthodoxy ? In comparison with the 
 number of students of the commercial school, 
 167, this showing is like Jean Paul Richter's 
 father, poor but pious. It was not so formerly, 
 in the days of Ottoman persecution, or before that, 
 in the time of the Greek domination, with St. 
 Sophia as the crowning edifice of the Christian 
 world ! 
 
 The convent we now visit is called in Greek 
 Hagia Trias, or Trtacia. Its founder was one 
 Photius. He is called illustrious ; but whether 
 he be so or not, depends upon those who are in- 
 terested in the vicissitudes of the Eastern Church. 
 He was one of the learned patriarchs, a leading 
 mind and conspicuous figure in the ninth century. 
 
 The convent fell into ruins when the Turks 
 took Constantinople. It was rebuilt in the six- 
 teenth century by one Metrophanos. He, too, 
 was a celebrity in Orthodox annals. He was the 
 son of a tile-maker of a little town on the Bos- 
 
T 66 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 phorus, Haskeui. He became an archbishop of 
 Cappadocia, and afterwards patriarch of Constan- 
 tinople. He abdicated on a charge of simony 
 against him. The story told of him is, that on 
 retiring from the patriarchate, he received the 
 two dioceses of Lamia and Chios. He sold the 
 first and retired to the second ! He liked the 
 thirty pieces. Still he was and is renowned and 
 revered by his fellow-churchmen and by scholars. 
 He was a crank on one subject. He was wild in 
 his endeavors to recover the manuscripts which 
 had escaped the Turkish conquest of 1453. He 
 recovered many of them. A catalogue of his find- 
 ings was found in 1572. After his death his col- 
 lection was scattered. It is recorded that a 
 learned diplomat, Ghislan de Busbecq, who first 
 brought the lilac into Europe and who lived three 
 months on Halki, in the sixteenth century, sent 
 a cargo of wonderful manuscripts into Europe. 
 I have been in the receipt of many letters from 
 American scholars, anxious to know about many 
 missing manuscripts. They are supposed to be 
 yet concealed in the crypts of St. Sophia or in the 
 dusty mosque alcoves in and around Stamboul. 
 I have been besieged to bring them out of their 
 stony tombs and mummy cerements. It may be 
 proper here to say that all such attempts are 
 vain. The lost books of the Greek classics, frag- 
 ments of Livy or Pausanius may be exhumed ; but 
 
GRAND VIEW. 
 
 I6 7 
 
 my efforts, like those of my predecessor, the au- 
 thor of " Ben Hur, " have been in vain. Only a few 
 treasures remain in the library of the Holy Trin- 
 ity of Halki. If the precious classics were ever 
 there, the changes and chances of time, war and 
 fire have left of the " fund of Metrophanos," pre- 
 cious few of the relics which he gathered with so 
 much scholastic zealotry. 
 
 The marks of fire are seen on the smirched 
 foundation stones of the present edifice of Trinity. 
 During the Greek revolution, in 1821, the con- 
 vent was burned. It was again built by the pa- 
 triarch Germain IV., in 1844; so that it is com- 
 paratively new. The old building of Phocius was 
 then changed into a theological seminary ; and so 
 it remains. 
 
 To reach the spacious paved courts of this 
 Trinity convent we pass around and up the 
 mountain, through shady woods, whose grounds 
 are not cumbered, like those of Prinkipo, with 
 rocks. When you attain the summit you have the 
 finest prospect of sea, sky, isle and continent I 
 have ever witnessed. From the promontory you 
 may not only gaze down into the Swiss vales of 
 the isle, but off into the shores of Asia and Eu- 
 rope. The great city of Constantinople seems to 
 be nearer and more resplendent in dome and min- 
 aret than from our villa at Prinkipo. From these 
 terraces of Trinity the mountains of the horizon, 
 
! 68 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 seen under their hazy attire, are lit up at sunset 
 with a glow of russet, pink, purple and gold which 
 would be anything but conducive to the study of 
 Greek or metaphysics. At Naples, when evening 
 paints her colors upon the sea and the isles of the 
 bay and in the very lustre of the air, one must 
 close the shutters, in order to think, read and 
 write. Is it not a marvel how the students of 
 these isles can gaze into recondite lore when 
 nature spreads for the eye such an illuminated vol- 
 ume of the good and beautiful? 
 
 After some inquiry we find a priest to show us 
 the inside of Trinity. He appears. He is of bare 
 head, of good face, but as dumb as an oyster. 
 Even our fair dragoman, Admiral Wood's sister, 
 could not coax much information from him. The 
 fact is, that he did not know as much as we did about 
 the convent and its history.^ However, as he was 
 unlocking the church door, I observe over its 
 portals the sign of the Trinity, three in one a tri- 
 angle, with an eye in the centre, symbolic of the 
 eternal All-seeing One. At each angle is the 
 initial of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Around 
 this triangle is a radiant golden glory. Some 
 Greek sentences below tell when the church was 
 rebuilt and by whom. The words are of new 
 Greek and unknown to us. On either side 
 are other emblems. One is that of an open book 
 or tablet of stone. It is the law. On the other 
 
TRINITY SYMBOLS AND OLD PHOCIUS. 
 
 169 
 
 side is a golden cup with a cross above it. It is 
 the sacred chalice or sacrament. In the vestibule 
 of the church is a strange picture. It is as old as 
 these emblems. It is black with the smoke of a 
 million candles burned from the ninth century to 
 the time of the destruction of the church. It 
 represents three angels entertained at a feast. It 
 is the Annunciation, I suppose. Within the 
 church are the same pictures which are seen in all 
 Greek churches, and which I have seen so often in 
 Russia and in Constantinople. They consist of 
 biblical scenes, from old chaos and the creation 
 down to the birth of the Saviour. In these pict- 
 ures you will see reproduced in horrid art the 
 Grecian features. The nose is prominent. In the 
 vestibule are the tombs of many patriarchs. We 
 are led to believe that one worn smooth by con- 
 stant walking over it is that of Phocius. But in 
 the American mind it is of little moment who 
 is Phocius to it or it to Phocius. Only the 
 carved skeleton of old Phocius is seen. * The 
 only living things about the convent are to be 
 found in the library. Here are books ; and John 
 Milton says that a book is a most reasonable 
 creature. " It is a life beyond life, an immortality 
 rather than a life." 
 
 Let us to the library. There we are joined 
 by a director of the college. He is arrayed in a 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 priestly stole, and his head is clad with the cylindri- 
 cal hat, the rim at its crown. He has abjured 
 the pendant veil from the hat for this occasion. 
 But like the typidal Greek priest, he has a black 
 beard. His hair, too, is long and curls. It is 
 parted in the middle, and neatly brushed behind 
 the ear. He is courteous, and is anxious to give 
 us all the satisfaction he can. He presents us to 
 the librarian. Ah! I must not forget him! His 
 name is Constantine. He has been here seven- 
 teen years. He is seventy years old, and gray 
 where he is not bald. He is not a ready, oral lin- 
 guist, but here our fair dragoman comes to the 
 front. We rejoice for an hour among these im- 
 mortals of the alcove. The librarian shows us 
 his catalogue. He shows us books in fourteen 
 languages. Many of them are quite old and Ori- 
 ental. He displays many old manuscripts in 
 Greek. One Testament is 1200 years of age. It 
 is on illuminated parchment. It looks old and 
 tired. % The library smacks a little of the French 
 Revolution, or of the encyclopedists of France. 
 It must have come out of freedom of the Greek 
 mind, aroused by the excitements at the end of 
 the last century. There is a goodly company of 
 mathematicians in one alcove ; but most of the 
 books are upon logic. Others pertain to "the 
 Fathers." 
 
 I asked Constantine : " Have you no novels 
 
IN THE L1BRAR Y. j - 1 
 
 here? Do your students never read fiction?" 
 
 He colors a little as he replies : 
 
 " I read all the time, mostly novels. It would 
 be tiresome here else. One of the patriarchs died, 
 and his niece brought us quite a lot of novels from 
 his library. The students don't read them." 
 
 " How many students graduated this year?" I 
 ask. 
 
 " Only eight, and only six of these are to be 
 priests ! It is not as it was." He sighs an ortho- 
 dox sigh, and resumes. 
 
 " Ah ! we have the same old banquet when the 
 young men go out into the world. If any of them 
 do not become clergymen, they have to pay ^15 
 extra for each year that they have studied here." 
 
 Woods Pasha is rummaging among the old 
 books. He finds a history of the Sultans in Eng- 
 lish. It is of the year 1610. It is full of rare 
 wood-cut portraits. He calls me to him. He 
 reads the first sentence. 
 
 "See ! Excellence ! what a race is here ! What 
 an author ! He derives the Turkish race from the 
 Tenori (Turkish) or Phoenicians the ancestors of 
 Carthage the soldiers of Hamilcar, Hanno, Han- 
 nibal and Hasdrubal, and the merchant princes 
 of Carthage ! Is not such a derivation almost 
 comical ? " 
 
 I recognize the big volume. It is the counter- 
 part of one presented me by Senator Wagstaff, of 
 
1/2 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 New York, just before I left that city on my 
 mission. It came over with his family from Eng- 
 land some 200 years ago ! 
 
 I am all interested in the volume. The ad- 
 miral resumes 
 
 " This volume goes on to say that it is a marvel 
 that from so small a beginning such a power as 
 that of the Ottoman developed, at which the 
 world grows pallid " 
 
 " Ah, my dear Admiral, that was written in 
 A.D. 1610." 
 
 But the admiral grows intensely interested. 
 He asks the librarian : 
 
 " If I should want to read or borrow this book, 
 can I have the privilege ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Constantine, " come a-, any time- 
 even at midnight, and you are welcome to all we 
 have!" 
 
 I said to the gentle bookworm : 
 
 " I wonder you Greek folk never care in your 
 grand ambition to rival the wandering Ulysses, and 
 in your persecutions and trials here seek an Odys- 
 sey from the Orient, to America ! " 
 
 " Ah ! Excellence ! " said he, " I should have 
 gone there fifty years ago. It is now too late. I 
 must lay my bones here." 
 
 Then I pondered on a glimpse I had caught of 
 a vagrant sentence in an open volume of the 
 library. It was from Dr. Arnold. He says, in his 
 
IF IT HAD BEEN GREECE ; NO T ROME. l 
 
 comprehensive way, that on the destruction of the 
 Athenian fleet in the harbor of Syracuse, B.C. 413, 
 depended the fate of the world. But for the vic- 
 tory of Rome, the energies of Greece during the 
 next eventful century would have found their 
 field in the West no less than in the East ; and 
 then Greece, and not Rome, might have conquered 
 Carthage. Greek, instead of Latin, might have 
 been at this day the principal element of the lan- 
 guage of Spain, of France and of Italy ; and the 
 laws of Athens rather than of Rome might be the 
 foundation of the law of the civilized world. 
 Syracuse was a breakwater which God's provi- 
 dence raised up to protect the yet immatured 
 strength of Rome ! The learned teacher of 
 Rugby might have carried his supposition far- 
 ther, and hung on his hypothesis the possible con- 
 dition of the Christian religion with a patriarch 
 instead of a pope, giving the canons of faith to 
 the Latin races of the world ! These early Greek 
 fathers of the church, who recognized the great 
 white Slavonic czar as the chief father of their 
 religion, might now be giving ecclesiastical and 
 civil law to the majority of civilized nations ! 
 
 There is a fountain in the stony court under 
 the broad shade tree. The antique church, the 
 monks* apartments, and the patriarch's chamber, 
 the scene of many a wedding festival, these 
 with a prospective marriage ceremony, are in 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 reserve for another visit, for we shall go again to 
 the theologic college to drink in at sunset its won- 
 derful prospect toward the north where Stamboul 
 shines afar. 
 
 We now take a path to the south-western por- 
 tion of the isle, where the commercial college sits 
 serene at the top of another mountain. There 
 are no carriages on the isle, and yet the roads up 
 through the pine groves are as substantial, wide 
 and clean as if they were in the Bois de Boulogne. 
 Each of the pine trees is a picture, and the 
 ground beneath them, carpeted with the needles 
 and cones, makes the forests here much more eli- 
 gible for picnics and invalids than the forests of 
 Prinkipo. In fact, the lay of the land, the winding 
 roads and by-paths, the seats for the pedestrian 
 and lounger, and the general beauty, surpass our 
 more pretentious isle. 
 
 We arrive at the top of the mountain of, the 
 commercial school. Here are pretty gardens. 
 Here, too> is a tomb of much elegance. It is a 
 tomb of a patriarch of the Orthodox Greek 
 Church. There is a tomb of an English minister 
 of Queen Bess's time. He fought for one of the 
 Sultans in the Danubian country. The college 
 is semi-religious, although commercial. Soon we 
 are joined by one of its directors, and by the jani- 
 tor and several of his servants. It is vacation. 
 The students are absent. We enter the court- 
 
A LITTLE " COMMERCIAL " CHURCH. l ^ 
 
 yard and dismount. A priest with a pleasant 
 beaming smile not the kind of beam referred to in 
 the Scripture brings out a big key, and the an- 
 cient church is opened. There is no troublesome 
 unshoeing or slipping, as when we enter a 
 mosque. It is a little church and quite young. 
 It is only 800 years old. It is black with age and 
 the soot of burning candles. All the available 
 space in the two apartments and even in the little 
 altar room is filled with images of saints. One 
 saint twice produced, Saint Macarius, has a long 
 white beard that touches his sandals. Like all 
 images in the Greek churches, these pictures, 
 hands and all, are covered with either gold or sil- 
 ver or some metallic imitation. The faces are not 
 covered. They look out of the shiny aureoles. 
 Some rare relics are here, and exceptionally old 
 books, but the antique effect is tawdry. The 
 church is as neat as it can be in its dress of lace 
 and gold. There are carved seats, which look old 
 in the dim religious colored light from windows of 
 antique style. There is a vitriol lamp burning 
 before the Virgin. Faded flowers, silver chains, 
 crucifixes, volumes of the Scriptures, and chants, 
 these give a mysterious awe to this antique 
 edifice hid away in the mountains, which once 
 knew and felt the power of the great Greek 
 hierarchy and empire of the East. Tapers 
 by the score are piled up on a table. There is 
 
T -6 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 nothing, however, musty in the little pent-up edi- 
 fice, for the smell of myrtle or pine gives a deli- 
 cious sweetness. 
 
 As Pedro talks modern Greek like a native, be- 
 ing born on the borders of Epirus, we communi- 
 cate easily with the priest. We find him not only 
 a healthy and hirsute person, of fine physique and 
 pleasant manners, but of unusual intelligence as to 
 his own religion. 
 
 The director gallants us to the long salle a 
 manger and dormitory. These accommodate 167 
 students, and are as neat as can be. We visit the 
 library. It did not interest. It was made up of 
 Greek and French books. The latter are of the 
 age of the French Revolution or before. Rousseau 
 lies quietly beside Buffon : the one a beast and the 
 other a writer about beasts. Obsolete literature is 
 plentiful. We glance at a globe which represents the 
 world, including our United Colonies in the time 
 of John Smith of Virginia. Then we enter a long 
 corridor, decorated with sketches of ancient Greeks, 
 Homeric heroes and fathers of the church. We 
 seek the open air, feeling as if we had been buried. 
 
 Again we mount our donkeys. Sending off one 
 of the gamins to order our launch, we go round 
 the isle to the little bay in front of the college, 
 down to the water side. There we find a restau- 
 rant and garden. The proprietor gives us lemon- 
 ade and coffee, and a bouquet for " Madame." 
 
CHURCH UNDER GROUND. l ^ 
 
 We remount to take a path through the forests to 
 a little old church under ground, cut in the rocks. 
 It is the same kind of old church as the rest, only 
 with a different name. This is called " The 
 Holy Spirit." The Greeks always have a 
 restaurant or tavern near their religious home, just 
 as the Moslem has a mosque near his barracks, 
 or a fountain near his mosque. 
 
 We do not find any person taking care of this 
 " little church round the corner" of the white cliff, 
 where we venture. We are free to go upon the 
 premises. Here is a bed out in the air, and 
 another in a little cave near the church. Fuel is 
 gathered from the pine trees we beg pardon, not 
 "from," but " under" them ; for it is forbidden to 
 take the cones from the trees, only those that fall 
 are taken. Charcoal is already binned for the 
 winter. Could a more secluded spot be found on 
 this uninhabited part of the isle ? On the other 
 side more than a thousand people live. There the 
 streets are roomy and nice. The town reminds 
 one of a town in Italy or Spain, except that the 
 houses are better and more comfortable. They are 
 of wood. Halki is a sort of rival of Prinkipo as a 
 health and summer resort ; but the best class live 
 in Prinkipo. The rich people and grand villas are 
 in Prinkipo. I cannot help but conclude that 
 Halki has more natural beauty of site, forest and 
 shrubbery. Owing to the scholastic and other 
 
 12 
 
!^g THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 associations of Halki, there is more interest for the 
 Greek on this isle. When one sees the remnant 
 of this grand race, lifting up still, though under 
 adverse institutions and circumstances, the banner 
 of the cross, one cannot help pondering upon a his- 
 tory that began with the heroes of Troy, and even 
 yet listens delightedly to the oratory of Delyani 
 and Tricoupis under the shadow of the Acropolis. 
 Our next visit is to the church of St. George. 
 It is reached through the cypress avenues, as 
 the picture represents. St. George seems to be a 
 favorite with the Greeks, especially in these isles. 
 The king of Greece is popular, not only because 
 he is an amiable and equitable ruler, but because his 
 name is George. In a great many churches this 
 saint, who is of Cappadocia and has a marvellous his- 
 tory, is always pictured as slaying the dragon. In 
 the painting at St. George's monastery and church 
 in Halki, .he is painted as rescuing a damsel in dis- 
 tress from the fangs of the monster. The artist 
 has discreetly and graphically made the dragon 
 climb half way up the haunches of the saint's gray 
 charger, and has so arranged the dragon that 
 George runs his spear into his opened jaws' and 
 clear through the animal, making the weapon truly 
 lethal. It is not the pictures of this church that 
 allure the visitor, although there are in the new 
 church dozens of pictures of saints of the best 
 Russian art. They are presents from Russia. 
 
A RICH CHURCH. 
 
 But the situation is the attraction. The long dou- 
 ble alley of cypresses, three deep, leads the pleased 
 traveller up to the monastery. The main building 
 is on a precipitous bluff of rocks. From its ter- 
 races and under its cypresses Prinkipo is in full 
 and near view. It looks off to the east and south. 
 St. George monastery, too, has a history, but 
 there is not so much of antiquity or tradition about 
 it to give smirch to its saints or a dim religious 
 light to its richly dight windows. It is rich, how- 
 ever, in this world's goods. It is the proprietor of 
 some twenty houses in a long row upon the terrace, 
 above the cypresses. These it rents. In the Mid- 
 dle Ages it was connected with the church of 
 Chalcedon. Now, where is, or was, Chalcedon ? 
 It is on the way to Constantinople, which we shall 
 soon travel in another chapter. All these scenes 
 make us moralize upon events which carry us 
 back to the first centuries of the Christian religion. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 ANTIGONE AND PROTI HISTORIC AND OTHER 
 
 INCIDENTS. 
 
 THERE is not much to be seen by the eye upon 
 the island of Antigone. But its classic name 
 gives it a flavor of the Greek, while its three 
 monasteries have a rare, eventful history. The isl- 
 and was formerly called " Panormos," which 
 means in Greek " a harbor safe on all sides." 
 The Turks call it " Bourgas-Ada," the Island of the 
 Fortress, owing to an ancient fortress which ex- 
 isted there, but of which there is no trace now. 
 
 The monastery of the Transfiguration is on the 
 summit of the highest hill of this island. It was 
 pulled down by order of the Sultan Murat IV. in 
 1 720, in consequence of a procession with torches 
 which, according to ancient custom, went round 
 the monastery on the night of Good Friday in 
 that year. The Turks, seeing the lights and the 
 commotion from across at Kadikeui, became 
 alarmed. They demanded and obtained an edict 
 from the Sultan that the monastery should be razed 
 to the ground. Contrary to what the author of " lies 
 des Princes " says, there are plenty of ruins and 
 
 1 80 
 
MELANCHOLY ANTIGONE. 
 
 181 
 
 monuments connected with the monastery remain- 
 ing, and even tombs of exiled princes with the 
 bones carefully preserved. The author of " lies 
 des Princes " falls also into an unpardonable error 
 regarding the little island of Pita, which he places 
 between Halki and Prinkipo. He cannot surely 
 have visited the islands at all or else he would 
 have known that Pita is just in front of Antigone. 
 It helps immensely to make the little harbor of 
 that island a safe retreat. Pita is uninhab- 
 ited and has no interest whatever attaching to 
 it, except an ancient cistern with a quaintly carved 
 pillar in the middle. This shows that in former 
 times the isle was inhabited. 
 
 Antigone is a melancholy isle compared with 
 Halki and Prinkipo. Is it because so lugubri- 
 ously named ? Poor Antigone, the forerunner 
 of Juliet even as Haemon, her betrothed, was the 
 antitype of Romeo ; for did she not sacrifice her- 
 self when entombed alive, and her lover kill 
 himself by her corpse ? 
 
 Every isle of Greece thus perpetuates some in- 
 vention or myth in which the tragic element 
 plays its part. The birds of Antigone circle all 
 about us, then fly off, organize into companies and 
 battalions and return to us with a wail which 
 Greek fancy might translate into some woful song. 
 
 Upon the sides of the mountains, beyond the 
 cliffs, are lanes through the shubbery lanes for 
 
j 32 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 the goat and sheep. As we pass beyond the 
 point a wreck is seen with one mast standing. 
 The proofs are written in the chaotic rocks of 
 the shore, of how earthquake and tempest have 
 wounded and shaken the isle. The colors of the 
 rocks are various, some black as the porphyry of 
 upper Egypt, some brownish-red as the iron can 
 paint them, and some as white as snow. 
 
 As we regard it a duty to take possession, 
 pedis possessio, of each one of these princely ' 
 isles, we array our boat in greenery and flowers, 
 and start upon this September morning for An- 
 tigone. The wind is fresh. The curl of the 
 lilies upon the blue sea gives us warning ; but as 
 the wind, whose nautical moods I study, is not 
 from the south, we venture over the two miles 
 of azure. Before we turn the point of Halki, 
 the ferry from the city steams around that rocky 
 isle. A wave of a handkerchief from some one 
 on board indicates that our capoudji (messenger) 
 from the Legation is on board. As business is 
 always before diversion, we whisk our launch 
 around and pursue the steamer into the harbor 
 of Halki. Our Capitano must have had some- 
 thing aboard besides his esprit de corps, for he 
 jams our launch "Sunset" against the side of 
 the big boat, until my better half begins to forget 
 her duty as passenger and speaks words of com- 
 mand in several dialects at once ; and my Dalma- 
 
VISIT TO ANTIGONE. 
 
 'S3 
 
 tian serviteur, Pedro, regains his profane tongue, 
 which is Italian. We soon capture our mail- 
 bag and messenger. We read our letters from 
 home, fresh out of the pouch, and then, ho ! for 
 Antigone ! 
 
 The weather is a little hazy, partaking some- 
 thing of the captain's condition. We cannot see 
 the distant mountains of Asia except in dim 
 outline, but the sun shines on the minaretted 
 and domed glories of Stamboul ; and that is 
 enough. Antigone has quite a population. They 
 are nearly all, if not all, out on the pier to 
 greet our strange flag ; but as they charge a 
 mejidie (or dollar) if we stop at the pier more than 
 five minutes, the Captain makes money by hailing 
 a caique at half that sum. We land in that 
 little frail craft and in a tossing sea. The crowd 
 is attracted by our flag and the infrequency of 
 such a vessel at the port of Antigone. Once this 
 was quite a busy commercial place. The 
 heavy stone walls of the harbor, and the solid 
 walls of the villas, red and black with iron-rust, in- 
 dicate that formerly here was a substantial people. 
 The drives are all for donkeys ; no carnages are 
 allowed. But we dispense with donkeys, and are 
 content to saunter upon the terraces, where we 
 are observed by such members of the families of 
 the town as had not appeared on the quay to re- 
 ceive us. Many of the houses have elegant ter- 
 
1 84 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES, 
 
 raced gardens. Some of the houses are as quaint 
 as those of old Amsterdam, with points, angles, ga- 
 bles and balconies overhanging the street. After 
 some observation of the town and a glance at the 
 crowning monastery we re-embark, not without 
 a transient souvenir of the isle. This consists of 
 a huge watermelon, upon whose sides the Greek 
 artistic vender has made two drawings by scrap- 
 ing the green rind. The first sketch is plain 
 enough to decipher ; but can the reader guess 
 what the other one is. It is a fire-engine, such 
 as the pompiers of the towns and cities of the 
 East regard as the refinement of inventive art. It 
 is to be regretted that I cannot reproduce the 
 picture here. 
 
 Fires are very frequent in Constantinople and 
 its adjacent villages. The structures are wooden, 
 dry and frail. The streets are narrow, and 
 therefore the fires are very destructive. There is 
 much smoking of tobacco by the Turk. There is 
 such a general use of charcoal and braziers, such a 
 general carelessness in using the cigarette and 
 ch^bouq^^,e, together with the matted floors that 
 fires are frequent. The last thing that I saw 
 before I left Constantinople was the practice of 
 the fire brigade under the tuition of their chief. 
 He is a Hungarian nobleman. He is providing 
 modern means to put out fires, especially in Pera. 
 The little engines, a caricature of which suggests 
 
FIRE ENGINE. 
 
 I8 5 
 
 these incidents and which the pompiers carry 
 along with such hideous cries, are not bigger than 
 the ordinary engines which we have to water our 
 garden at home. They have but a single chamber. 
 This is about eight inches long by three or four in 
 diameter. They seem rather to nourish a fire. 
 The firemen themselves are said to be selected for 
 personal strength and activity, I should say for 
 lung force. On their heads they wear a broad 
 cap. They are naked to their waists. 
 
 Do you ask how is the alarm of fire given ? 
 
 I answer : Upon the elevated Seraskierate 
 tower of the War Office in Stamboul there is a 
 guard who watches. When a fire occurs, he 
 beats a big drum, and shouts wildly, " Wang gin 
 var" which, literally interpreted, means, " A fire 
 there is ! " This assembles the firemen. It 
 alarms the people. The tower of Galata is also 
 used for the same purpose on the other side of 
 the Golden Horn. If it be in daylight flags are 
 flaunted from the tops of these towers, indicating 
 by their color and arrangement where the fire is, 
 and by night other signals are used for this pur- 
 pose. 
 
 Before sailing homeward to Prinkipo we may at 
 least glance at, if not land upon, Proti. Proti is 
 the first, as the word signifies and as the map 
 shows, of the nine isles on the way from Con- 
 stantinople. It is by no means the last of the nine 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES, 
 
 in historic and monastic interest. Its houses are 
 few and scattered. But one tree decorates its 
 summit. A few others surround a house. The 
 sides of the isle looking toward the city are scarred 
 by wave and storm. It is not so attractive nor so 
 much frequented as the sister isles of Halki, Anti- 
 gone and Prinkipo. Whether it be fire, or goats, 
 or man, or tariffs, its forests are gone. Much of 
 its beauty and all of its productiveness have de- 
 parted. How often have we to remark this fact in 
 the Orient ! Dr. Stanley has said the same on the 
 aspect of Palestine. He refutes the presumption 
 of its limited resources in ancient days, by its 
 present depressed and desolate state. But doubt- 
 less the aspect and advantages of the land have 
 greatly changed. So it is with all these lands, in- 
 cluding the Greek isles and the Asian mainland. 
 Asia Minor and Syria could once have brought forth 
 ten times their present product and have supported 
 ten times as many as their present population. 
 This sterility involves the question always asked in 
 the Orient : " Can these calcined and stony places 
 ever have been a land flowing with milk and 
 honey?" 
 
 Proti is associated with Halki in several pretty 
 narratives. It once had another name. Greek 
 and Turkish nomenclature for places always 
 represent some sensible object. Some of the 
 names are quite poetical, others quite common- 
 
THE WHETSTONE ISLE, 
 
 I8 7 
 
 place. This isle of Proti appears to have been 
 formerly styled also " Acconce " or " Acconitis," 
 from the quantity of whetstone which was once 
 to be found on it, the Greek word accona 
 (Akovrj) meaning whetstone. By the Turks it 
 is called " Khinali Ada," Reddish Island. Proti 
 had formerly a fine harbor and populous village 
 on its eastern side, but they have disappeared. 
 Only a few remnants of ruins are left, among 
 which are two large-sized cisterns of the Byzan- 
 tine period. These indicate the spot where the 
 old village was situated. The harbor has been 
 washed away by the sea. The present village 
 occupies quite a different site. 
 
 There were three monasteries on this island. 
 The smallest of these monasteries was that built 
 by the Anatolian, General Vardane. It was de- 
 stroyed on the 2Oth of February, 1807, by the 
 British fleet under Admiral Sir John Duckworth 
 and Rear-Admiral Lewis. That fleet comprised 
 ten men-of-war. Among them may be mentioned 
 the two-decker, "-Endymion," and the " Ajax" of 
 74 guns. The latter caught fire accidentally and 
 was entirely destroyed. After forcing the Straits 
 of the Dardenelles and destroying part of the 
 Turkish fleet, which was lying at Gallipolis, this 
 fleet came and anchored in the harbor of Proti. 
 There it remained eleven days. The Turks, in 
 order to prevent the English from getting water 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 and fuel from the island, sent a small detach- 
 ment of sixty determined men from Kadikeui, 
 who, after some difficulty, succeeded in landing 
 and entrenching themselves in the monastery. 
 The English landed a party and attacked the 
 monastery to which they finally set fire. The 
 Turks, driven from their stronghold, offered a fierce 
 resistance. After killing a considerable number, 
 they at last drove the English out of the isle, and 
 before the latter could return in stronger force, the 
 Turkish detachment was saved from its perilous 
 situation by the inhabitants of Halki, who came in 
 their caiques at night and took off the Turks. In 
 recompense for this service and their bravery, the 
 Halkiotes were granted by the then Sultan, Selim, 
 exemption from taxes, a privilege which they con- 
 tinue to enjoy up to the present time. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 PLATI AND OXIA SIR HENRY BULWER'S FATAL LIT- 
 TLE ISLE HIS DIPLOMACY AND HIS ECCEN- 
 TRICITIES. 
 
 FROM any eminence in Constantinople, upon a 
 clear day, two isolated rocks apparently leap out 
 of the Sea of Marmora the classic Propontis. 
 But they are not merely rocks. Oxia, in Greek, 
 means "late in the day," or "Sunset." It is thus 
 named because the sun lingers last on its prom- 
 inence. From one point it looks like the pyra- 
 mid of Ghizi. We have not, yet been upon it, but 
 we have been around it. It is not inhabited ex- 
 cept by snakes. Our visit is, therefore, reserved. 
 But we have accomplished the other little isle, 
 Plati. It is the Oriental custom to name locali- 
 ties from some concrete quality, association, or ob- 
 ject. What Plati means in Greek I can easily sur- 
 mise. Although it is some 300 feet above the sea 
 level, still it is a plateau. It can be cultivated 
 nearly over its whole area, which is at least 150 
 acres. The name is derived from the Greek word 
 TrAdTy, which means a flat or broad surface. It is 
 the same root for our word plain, or plaza, or 
 
 189 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 plat. Plati is due west from Prinkipo and due 
 south from Constantinople. It is some fifteen 
 miles from the city. 
 
 These twin warders of the archipelago Oxia 
 and Plati are conspicuous figures in the sea. 
 They have each an individuality, not merely phys- 
 ically, but strategetically. The power, whether 
 Greek or Turkish, that held Constantinople, used 
 them as sentinels to warn of the approach of the 
 Genoese or knightly enemy. Their isolation made 
 them capital prisons. Within their horrid caves, 
 now used for cisterns, the convict was immured 
 without hope. Sometimes the loose and aban- 
 doned visited them for the worst purposes of lust 
 and escapades of deviltry. Pirates sometimes con- 
 cealed themselves there. But during the Greek 
 rule, the Greek Church erected monasteries up- 
 on them. The remains of these are still seen 
 upon both islands. There was a church, or oratory, 
 on Plati. Its debris is found near the castle by 
 the sea. Several times, when the dogs of the big 
 city became obstreperous, or the horses sick, the 
 former were deported to the rocky and barren 
 islet of Oxia, and the horses there found their 
 paradise. In the place where the hermits were 
 once established, civilization gave eternal rest to 
 the animal creation. Sometimes these isles were 
 used as a target for the practice of the Ottoman 
 naval guns. 
 
OLD DUNGEONS. jgj 
 
 The oubliettes, or dungeons, were once the 
 scene of a singular freak of justice. Two eminent 
 patricians had a quarrel. One was a Greek, Basil 
 Bardas ; the other a Roman, Scliros. They 
 fought the first duel recorded in the Greek annals. 
 The story runs that the Emperor Constantine VII. 
 exiled them one to Oxia, and the other to Plati. 
 They were consoled, however ; for, as by a cruel 
 irony, they were placed near each other, and one 
 suffered like the other ! Constantine ordered that 
 their eyes should be put out. It was the pleasant 
 pastime of these Greek rulers to burn out the 
 eyes. But on this occasion the Plati prisoner es- 
 caped, and there was no adequate compensation. 
 
 These isles have associations more interesting 
 to Americans than those which are philologic, his- 
 toric, geologic, or aesthetic. Plati is best known 
 as the isle of Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer. The dis- 
 tinguished diplomat came to Turkey after his ser- 
 vice at Washington as English minister. He 
 followed here Sir Stratford Canning, the greatest 
 of the English ambassadors. How Sir Henry 
 obtained this isle and what he did with it, and what 
 associations cluster about it in connection with his 
 name, would furnish a strange, eventful history. 
 These concern the biography and eccentricities of 
 the man and the minister, as well as the qualities 
 and condition of the isle itself. 
 
 There are those in Washington who remember 
 
{ g 2 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 Sir Henry. The Clayton-Bulwer treaty was a fact 
 of his accomplishment. Scarcely any public man, 
 from Judge Douglas's time to the present, but has 
 taken a hand in the discussion of this treaty and 
 its obnoxious clause so inimical to certain Isth- 
 mian interests and ambitions of the United States. 
 Among the rest, in an humble way, the writer 
 hereof made a report on April 16, 1880, in favor 
 of its abrogation. The report developed some 
 matters not generally known. It concerned the 
 Monroe doctrine and an interoceanic ship canal. 
 The President had urged in his message the policy 
 of the canal being under American control. He 
 urged the necessity of such control as a part of 
 the guardianship of our coast line. Although 
 New Granada in the railroad franchise of 1846, 
 and Nicaragua in the Hise treaty of 1849, recog- 
 nized the American protectorate, the latter treaty 
 was not ratified because of Mr. Clayton's alarm 
 lest a collision with Great Britain would follow. 
 The Mosquito king played its little, buzzing, 
 stinging part. Mr. Clayton disavowed the Hise 
 treaty to the English minister, Crampton ; but 
 begged the English not to allow us to appear 
 cowardly by the abandonment of " great and splen- 
 did advantages." Mr. Clayton begged England 
 to give up her Mosquito protectorate and share 
 with us the authority over the transit. In this 
 awkward way the negotiations proceeded until 
 
CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY. JQ^ 
 
 April 19, 1850, when the partnership with Great 
 Britain was consummated. This was done under 
 the adroit management of Sir Henry Bulwer. 
 Both parties agreed never "to erect or maintain 
 any fortifications commanding or in the vicinity of 
 any ship canal, or to occupy, or fortify, or assume 
 or exercise any dominion over Nicaragua, Costa 
 Rica, the Mosquito coast, or any part of Central 
 America." 
 
 England often violated this treaty. But why 
 particularize ? It is a long story, in which such 
 statesmen as Cass and Buchanan, Clarendon and 
 Napier, Ousley and Dallas, Clayton and Bulwer, 
 and recently Clarendon, Blaine, and Frelinghuy- 
 sen have figured, and always with an inconsequen- 
 tial result for us. The subtle crystallization which 
 Sir Henry Bulwer produced remains like a wall of 
 adamant across the line of our policy and the 
 Isthmus. Our puny statesmen have tilted in vain 
 against this wall with their javelins of straw. 
 
 The English employ such trained diplomatists 
 as Bulwer the world around. But his chicanery 
 and selfishness overtook him at last. His Nemesis 
 was the genius of Plati. The rock .upon which 
 his career foundered was this islet to which the 
 prow of our little launch is turned. 
 
 Sir Henry has left various impressions here 
 upon those who knew him. I.was not in Congress 
 when the treaty was made. I do not remember 
 
 '3 
 
i 9 4 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 ever to have seen him at Washington. He is 
 described as a most engaging and charming gen- 
 tleman. In social etiquette and style he had no 
 peer. He was tall and thin in person. His nose 
 was hooked and peaked ; his face was long and 
 grave ; his eye was like a flash of lightning ; his 
 upper teeth protruded, and his mouth was set a 
 little awry. Despite these gauckeries he was not 
 unhandsome. I fancy that he was not unlike his 
 elder brother, the great novelist. In conversation 
 he was unrivalled. He was a capital raconteur. 
 He liked to emit startling paradoxes. He was an 
 admirable speaker. Whether he was sincere or 
 not, he made all seek his society and like him. 
 His voice was measured, low, musical, and per- 
 suasive. He was most at home in intrigue. In 
 this he displayed the timbre of his character. He 
 went into a diplomatic contest con amore, vizor up 
 and lance pointed. He generally pierced the 
 armor of his antagonist. He usually won, for he 
 did not disdain to use all the arts known to the 
 old style diplomacy, which he held was fast fading 
 away. Altogether he is described to me by the 
 physician who attended him and by the captain of 
 his yacht as a most extraordinary and fascinating 
 man, but replete with whims, of which the owner- 
 ship of this isle is by some accounted one of the 
 most peculiar. 
 
 He was ambassador in the time of Abdul Mejid, 
 
THE FATAL GIFT. ^ 
 
 whom I remember seeing on my trip here in 1851. 
 No more worthy Sultan, unless I except his son, 
 the present Sultan, Abdul Hamid II., ever did 
 more for the reform of his Government or made 
 more sacrifices for the advancement of civilization. 
 He is known in the East as the Haroun al Raschid 
 of modern times. Sir Henry Bulwer had, there- 
 fore, many opportunities of aiding effectually in 
 the regeneration of the East. 
 
 Sir Henry conquered the good-will of this Sul- 
 tan of happy memory, by some special efforts 
 about the succession in Egypt. As a consequence, 
 or reward, the Khedive of Egypt made him a gift of 
 this isle. He began its improvement. He erected 
 the two castles one on the shore and the other on 
 the summit. It is said that they were intended as 
 miniatures of his own ancestral home at Knebs- 
 worth, England. He had another whim. He 
 thought to raise cattle on the island. In fact, he 
 stocked it with some cattle of the rarest breed. 
 A storm of a fortnight, before the days of steam 
 ferries here, prevented adequate provender from 
 reaching the isle. The cattle perished and so did 
 the enterprise. He seldom lived on the island. 
 His wife visited it frequently, but only to remain 
 a short time. Sometimes with friends he stayed 
 over night and had a good time, but his health 
 was infirm. He could not follow very far a cer- 
 tain jocund disposition without hurt to his physical 
 
196 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 system. He was odd about his health. His doctor 
 tells me that he saw him every day for four years, 
 and that he used to take a different pill at the end 
 of each dish at his meals. It was one of his ca- 
 prices to have frequent imaginary ills and pills. It 
 was the remark of Guizot about him, that "if Bul- 
 wer were ill, look out ! Mischief was sure to fol- 
 low his pills." Guizot had reference to Bulwer's 
 tact at Madrid in the matter of the Spanish mar- 
 riage of the Duke de Montpensier, son of Louis Phil- 
 ippe. Sir Henry must have had a bad spell about 
 the time he inveigled Mr. Clayton to sign away an 
 American protectorate over the Isthmian ways. 
 
 How he used to chuckle over his diplomatic 
 triumphs ! Some of them were won in Roumania 
 along with Halil Pacha, a festive companion and 
 a good fellow, a colleague of Bulwer in Roumania. 
 How he used to laugh over his circumvention of 
 Mr. Clayton ! These are a part of the traditions 
 and gossip yet at Pera, which is called the ant-hill 
 of politics. 
 
 He had curious characteristics. Sometimes it 
 was thought that he was mean in money matters ; 
 but the owner of our launch, Mr. Jones, who 
 brought out a steam yacht for him from England, 
 and used to ship him about these isles and the 
 Bosphorus, tells me that at times he was extrava- 
 gantly and unexpectedly generous. He was often 
 timorous of society. . He would hide from his em- 
 
B UL WER'S ECCENTRICITIES. j g-r 
 
 bassy and friends for weeks at a time. It was 
 his whim or his respite. His doctor says that 
 once, while attending him at Cairo, he insisted 
 on spending three weeks with an old English 
 farmer out of that city, where, amid the chickens, 
 donkeys, dogs, and hogs, he was content to live 
 on the homely fare and under the simple cottage 
 thatch of the peasant, whom he never afterward 
 failed substantially to remember. 
 
 It is a part of the reminiscences about Sir Henry, 
 that while he was resplendent in social life and ex- 
 quisite in personal taste, he was not to be relied 
 upon. His word was not absolute verity. It was 
 not exactly unveracity. It was imagination, all 
 compact. It was a desire to please. He was 
 princely in his entertainments. After he was no 
 longer ambassador here, he returned on some 
 speculative mission. He held the same old high 
 carnival daily and nightly with his epicurean 
 friends. What he did to embarrass the American 
 missionaries here I do not exactly know. It had 
 some reference to the^ American (Robert) College. 
 Its then President, Dr. Hamlin, in his book, han- 
 dles him without gloves. He held him to be as 
 destitute of public probity as he was of private 
 morality. 
 
 As Dr. Hamlin was outspoken as to this person- 
 age, I may quote what he says, in his published 
 volume : 
 
198 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 " The case of the college was at length laid be- 
 fore Sir Henry Bulwer. He was a man, of no prin- 
 ciple ; but he knew that to carry the measure 
 would get him credit in England. He took hold 
 of it with the intention of carrying it through. 
 After a long time, and wearisome delays, he wrote 
 me a note, saying that the question was decided, 
 and that, within three days, I should have leave to 
 go on. 
 
 " I next received a note from him, telling me that 
 I had made an unwise and inconsiderate bargain, 
 in purchasing that place, and the consequences 
 should justly fall on my own head. He saw no 
 reason why the English Embassy should have any 
 further trouble with regard to it ! 
 
 " It was a treachery so base that I made no reply 
 to it, and had nothing more to do with Sir Henry 
 Bujwer. I felt curious, however, to know the rea- 
 son for such a sudden facing about. Nor was it 
 at all difficult to find. 
 
 " He had received a magnificent 'gift' from the 
 Pasha of Egypt, with a request that he would ar- 
 range some important and pressing affairs with 
 the Porte. 
 
 " Another was sent to the Countess G , one 
 
 of Sir Henry's mistresses, and, of course, he un- 
 dertook the Pasha's business. Among the condi- 
 tions made by A'ali Pasha, in return, was, that he 
 should throw that college question overboard 
 
HIS OLD-TIME DIPLOMACY. 
 
 which he accordingly did, as not worth a moment's 
 consideration. It is a good specimen of Sir 
 Henry's character. In similar circumstances he 
 would have thrown overboard any English inter- 
 est with equal coolness." 
 
 As an illustration of the morale of the diplomacy 
 of Sir Henry Bulwer, let me record a fact. In 
 May, 1860, Prince Gortschakoff addressed a circu- 
 lar to the great powers of Europe as to the condi- 
 tion of the Christians in the Balkan peninsula. 
 It suggested inquiry to verify the facts, so as to 
 bring about some amelioration. Sir Henry drew 
 up a list of the questions which he sent to the Brit- 
 ish consuls throughout the Empire. He accompa- 
 nies it with a circular of his own. In this he inti- 
 mates the way in which he expects the consuls to 
 answer. As a sample of his shrewdness, not to 
 say old-time diplomacy, in his circular of the 8th 
 of August, 1860, the following passage occurs: 
 
 " Your conduct in this crisis will be duly 
 watched by me, and my opinion whether favorable 
 or the reverse, communicated to Her Majesty's 
 government." 
 
 This threat had its commentary in the action of 
 one unfortunate consul. He failed to receive the 
 circular, and wrote too plain spoken a report. He 
 afterwards apologized for it when he saw the cir- 
 cular, and wrote a second destroying the effect of 
 the first. 
 
200 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 This lack of private morality is not treasured 
 against him so much as the lack of public honor. 
 Of his acquisition and disposition of this rocky 
 islet there is much said. After the isle was 
 given him, Sir Henry, in 1854, spent $75,000 in 
 its so-called improvement. He did not keep it 
 long, but somehow, in some peculiar circuitous 
 way, he resojd it for a round sum to the then 
 Khedive of Egypt, Ismael Pasha, who yet lives as 
 the best or worst type of a millionaire who has 
 wrought a great fortune out of the misfortunes of 
 his country. 
 
 One of the stories which remains as to this isle 
 is, that when Lord Lyons was appointed in Sir 
 Henry's stead as ambassador here, he called on 
 Lord Palmerston at the Foreign Office in Lon- 
 don to receive his instructions. After they were 
 given, Lord Lyons took his leave, saying : 
 
 " My lord, is there anything else you can say 
 as to Turkish affairs and my duties ? " 
 
 Lord Palmerston replied " No." 
 
 Lord Lyons said " Good-by. " 
 
 As he reached the door and was about to make 
 his exit, Lord Palmerston called out : 
 
 " My lord ! Yes ! One thing I forgot. Never 
 own an island ! " 
 
 It was this island of Plati to which Palmerston 
 referred. It lost Bulwer his place, for he sold it 
 for a large sum to a party interested in his ser- 
 
THE LA UNCH IN NE W TOILE T. 2Q j 
 
 vice. He lost his office by the indelicacy of the 
 transaction. 
 
 Now that we know the later history of the isle, 
 let the launch steam up. Ho! for Plati ! Let us 
 see what are the graces of the isle which attracted 
 and outwitted the clever diplomatist. 
 
 Before we dash away from the scala let us take 
 an observation or two. With a good glass the 
 two castles upon this rocky islet are visible from 
 Prinkipo. We make preparations to launch out 
 for it and lunch on it. Our Dalmatian serviteur, 
 Pedro Skoppeglia, prepares the latter, while our 
 Maltese Capitano Vincenzo takes the rudder in 
 hand and gives his order. 
 
 The launch is newly upholstered. It looks as 
 gay as a jaybird. The cushions have been newly 
 covered, and the flag looks its prettiest. The 
 sea is quiet. No white horses are capering over 
 its smooth azure surface. A few fishermen are 
 dropping their nets. They look picturesque in 
 their red sashes, baggy breeches and fez caps. 
 They are half Greek, half Ottoman. A few ships 
 lie at anchor in the harbor. The Asian coast, with 
 its mountain curves on the north and east, is faintly 
 lined against a sky which has but a few fleeces of 
 clouds in the east, hiding the snowy tops of the 
 Mysean Olympus. The sea is intense in its 
 azure, except where there are rich bands of green, 
 and the gulls sit like white flowers on its bosom. 
 
202 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 The water is as clear as a fountain in July when 
 one " sees each grain of gravel." Lake Tahoe, in 
 Nevada, is not more lucent than this water of the 
 Propontis. A gentle breeze ripples it with sun- 
 shine, and makes a myriad of glittering dia- 
 mond points which decorate its blue robe. A 
 few caiques ^^ feluccas with white wings are in 
 the distance, whose horizon is stained here and 
 there with the Cardiff coal smoke emitted from 
 the steamers bound from Constantinople to the 
 Dardanelles. 
 
 What a picture is that to the northward ! 
 Stamboul, like an odalisque in her yashmak of 
 finest tulle, seems to emerge from the blue deep. 
 Like a picture of Turner, a semi-ideal glimpse of 
 Venice or some weird mirage of Orientalism, it 
 seems a fairy city of the sea. It is set on seven 
 hills, and, although a dozen and more miles off, it 
 looks as unreal as if woven by unseen fingers in 
 aerial looms an unsubstantial dream of a country 
 that never was on sea or land, which " great- 
 browed Homer ruled as his demesne." 
 
 My wife suggests a possibility of fishing at 
 Plati, or on the way. At once we are environed 
 by a picturesque group. We choose a four-oared 
 caique with a canopy, and two sturdy Greeks. 
 The caique itself is a picture. On its inside is a 
 clean floor covered with Turkish rugs of rich col- 
 ors. The wood-work is stained with golden hues. 
 
VIEWS FROM THE SEA. ^ 
 
 The outside is of green, red and white, daintily 
 dashed or strewn with flowers not inartistically 
 painted. You cannot tell stern from bow, so 
 airily tip-tilted are the graceful ends of the boat. 
 Our lines and bait are ready. We take a turn in 
 the harbor with the launch, which was named by 
 its owner, Mr. Jones, from whom it was leased, in 
 honor of a pet name I have heard frequently : 
 "Sunset." Then we take the caique in tow and 
 leave the quay with much clat. 
 
 Before we leave, let us take a glance at the old 
 town, with its bath-houses and stone quays. What 
 is that moving object far off to the Asian shore ? 
 Is it a duck or a seamew ? The glass reveals it! 
 It is an amateur in a flatboat, with paddles, which 
 the man deftly plies. Our little screw gives a few 
 saucy, splashy turns, for the admiration of the 
 fishermen and Greek gamins of the quay, and we 
 are off for the west, America-ward ! Halki is 
 neared. Her big yellow barracks by the shore, 
 with the Turkish naval school, her Greek the- 
 ological college on the northern summit, and 
 her wooded and lovely curved mountains, resem- 
 bling a Mexican saddle or an inverted caique 
 these detain the eye, but not the launch. 
 
 A breeze springs up as we pass the hotels 
 Calypso and Giacomo on the craggy shore of 
 Prinkipo. The superb villas which crown the 
 bluffs are on our left. The breeze starts the pris- 
 
2O4 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 matic windmills in motion. The flag over the 
 Azarian water tower is our own star-spangled 
 banner. It kisses the breeze, and we salute the 
 starry emblem. Boys are swimming in the bay. 
 The mountains, nearly to the top, seem to sway 
 in the wind with their pines. The pretty nooks 
 and twisted rocks of the shore, the gardens pro- 
 fuse in scent, flower and rare trees pass by as if 
 we are indeed in dream-land, with pleasure domes 
 magically evoked out of sleep. Soon we pass on 
 the south side of Halki. Its rocks are broken, 
 cavernous, and precipitous, as if lashed by a thou- 
 sand storms. Along this south side of Halki is 
 a beautiful harbor. We pass round point after 
 point of Halki, until between Halki and Antig- 
 one there opens a vista scarcely credible for 
 its loveliness. Chatak-Dagh, the highest moun- 
 tain of the mainland of Asia, is in our rear, 1500 
 feet high. It fills the gap which we look through. 
 The shore line and mountains make a landscape 
 over which and through which there hangs an 
 interpenetrating lustre and distant unveiling which 
 would make Bierstadt wild with artistic enthusi- 
 asm. These isles take on a different dress when 
 observed from the sea. 
 
 We forget to look at yonder avenue of cypresses 
 on Halki. They lead up to another famous mon- 
 astery, where many a Greek exile has been housed 
 and many a marriage ceremony has been per- 
 
CLASSIC SURROUNDINGS. 2Q - 
 
 formed. The rocky ledges of Antigone, near 
 which we now sail, are rugged and lofty. They 
 are not devoid of trees, which give garniture to 
 their sides and ledges. Here sea birds live in 
 great numbers. As we turn to look back again 
 the dark coves of Western Prinkipo are revealed, 
 and beyond the southern end of Prinkipo, little 
 Niandro lies, almost in ambush, at the feet of 
 St. George's mountain, which looms up as if it 
 would rival Olympus, whose head is shrouded 
 in the white clouds anchored over the Mysean 
 mountains. 
 
 Now, if we could keep right on, on, on, where 
 would we land ? Get the map and see. It strikes 
 me that we would strike Lemnos isle, to which 
 the Empress Irene was banished when it pleased 
 her lord-treasurer to show, his harsh authority 
 over the murderous mother whose bones lie some- 
 where on the Isle of Prinkipo. Or if we missed 
 Lemnos, going due west, we would come up 
 against the coast of Thessaly, and almost under 
 the shadow of that other and more classic Olym- 
 pus as to which there is much to be said when the 
 roll of Homer's heroes is called. 
 
 Our boat turns now to the isle of Bulwer Plati. 
 It looks near, say five miles. I strive to sketch 
 its outlines, for its exterior seems as yet only a 
 blank rock. Its castles are dimly lined and neb- 
 ulously white. We look back. Great shadows 
 
20 6 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 from white fleeces of clouds are moving over the 
 Asian shore, and old Olympus has not yet come 
 out of his tabernacle. The wavering line of the 
 Asian shore to the south is pencilled on the edge 
 of the horizon. It soon vanishes around Mo- 
 dena's gulf and is lost in the sea. 
 
 Passing the checkered and streaked cliffs of 
 Halki and Antigone, noting the walls here and 
 there to prevent land slides and excavations from 
 which iron and copper have been taken, observing 
 the clean-tilled brown and red earth which the 
 olive and cypress ornament, smelling the scented 
 shrub or machie which gives its fragrance to the 
 air, we turn again to look back ; and lo ! St. 
 George's monastery, on southern Prinkipo, is a 
 white dot on the green eminence. We pass the 
 southern shore of Antigone and note upon the 
 narrow shingly beach the men who hunt birds, 
 steal their eggs, and gather oysters or some other 
 crustacce, which abound on these shores. They 
 have boats. We run close to the beetled crags, 
 colored and speckled like the increase of Jacob's 
 flocks, while here and there are big boulders held 
 aloft in the arms of stout rocks which frost and 
 earthquake have tumbled from the scarred moun- 
 tain sides. Antigone rises sheer 500 feet. Her 
 side is full of caves. What are those white flowery 
 specks mingled with the rock and greenery ? We 
 soon ascertain, for have we not discovered and 
 
BIRD LIFE. 
 
 aroused the gulls and cormorants that here nestle ? 
 They come out of their nooks by the thousand, 
 and keep up such a clamor that it seems like the 
 angry protest of a bird mob against the invasion 
 of their haunts by our launch. 
 
 These are the birds which make Marmora and 
 the Bosphorus so full of life, even when the hot 
 air silences all other noise and motion. They are 
 never disturbed or killed by the inhabitants. 
 They have a monopoly of the isle. They are 
 gentle, as all inhabitants of the isle, which is 
 named after the heroine of Sophocles, should be. 
 
 This tameness of the birds is not limited to the 
 Island of Prinkipo. All through the mosques and 
 groves and walls and gardens of the old city of 
 Stamboul you hear a universal twitter and the 
 fluttering of wings which indicate the life of the 
 birds. The sparrows fly in and out of the houses. 
 The swallows, which seemed partial to my presence, 
 fix their nests in every convenient arch in and out 
 of the bazaars. The pigeons are maintained by 
 many, and have a mosque of their own named 
 after them. The gulls rival in number the turtle- 
 doves, the one having dominion of the air and 
 the other of the woods and cemeteries. The 
 halcyons fly in long ranks up and down the Bos- 
 phorus, as if restlessly intent on some very 
 earnest business ; while the grave and dignified 
 stork sits upon the towers of Anatolia and Rou- 
 
2o8 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 melia, and upon the cupolas of the grand mauso- 
 leums. The Turk never harms these birds. 
 Every bird has a little office of trust which it exe- 
 cutes for this wild, reckless and sanguinary Turk. 
 
 Now we steer direct for Plati. Its profile is a 
 semicircle. It has dark gaps in its sides. There is 
 a white building on its shore and another on its sum- 
 mit. A few more whirls of the "Sunset's" screw 
 and there is revealed the two Anglo-Saxon castles. 
 No houses yet appear. The smaller sister, Oxia, 
 is more like a pyramid. In fact, it is about twenty 
 times as large as the pyramid of Ghiza, but not so 
 symmetrical. As we draw near it takes on a rough 
 aspect. These twin isolated rocks, as we approach, 
 become quite tall and roomy. I should say that 
 Plati Bulwer's Isle is at least a mile in circuit. 
 Looking to the north-west there appears in dim 
 outline the European coast. The white specks 
 are the houses of San Stefano. There the famous 
 Turco-Russian treaty was made, and there the 
 Russian army lay in wait ready for a spring at, and 
 into, Constantinople. 
 
 As we approach the little isle the haze lifts. 
 The desert of blue water is oased by a splen- 
 did ship in full sail, bearing the Greek ensign. 
 It moves like a vision of beauty and leaves 
 no cloud upon the sky. It hides between the 
 isles we have passed, then reappears. It is mov- 
 ing toward Modena, which is the port of the 
 
WELCOME TO PL. ATI. 2OQ 
 
 ancient capital of the Ottoman at the foot of 
 Olympus. 
 
 Now we are within a hundred yards of Plati, 
 but as we cannot land in the launch, we embark 
 on the caique with the fishermen, and are rowed 
 into a little cave, where we are saluted by the sen- 
 eschal of the castle. He is an old man, an Arme- 
 nian, George by name. His last name is the last 
 thing we inquire for. Every one here goes by 
 the Christian name, even the Turks ! The castle 
 is then, indeed, inhabited. Its towers and walls 
 have a relict radiance of past glory. As we enter 
 the chief room an enormous chandelier attracts at- 
 tention. Then the fresco of the walls, the mosaic 
 of the floors, and the tessellated pavements of the 
 courts all speak of occupation and sudden decay. 
 Everything is quiet. No birds sing : not even a 
 cicada chirps. Not a ship or boat is in view. 
 The sea is still. It seems like that primeval time 
 before the winds were loosed from their caves. 
 The water glistens and glows under the July sun. 
 The haze clears away almost entirely. The city 
 of Stamboul rises out of the blue elements. The 
 minarets and cupolas of the mosque of Sulieman- 
 yeh the best specimen of the Osmanli structural 
 genius and the minarets and dome of stately 
 Sofia, seem to gesture upward and swell with new 
 grandeur. Turning to the east, every one of the 
 nine isles are marked in clear outline, except little 
 14 
 
2 j THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 Pita, which plays hide and seek behind Antigone, 
 and Andirovitha, which lies prone like the dragon 
 under the shadow of St. George of Prinkipo. The 
 clouds still enshroud Olympus on the south, but 
 the outline of the Asiatic coast is becoming more 
 definite. 
 
 The lower castle is much the larger. It has 
 many chambers reception rooms with fireplaces, 
 as if it might have been comfortable in winter. 
 One of the rooms is a large frescoed hall. It has 
 various bookcases, but no books, only painted titles. 
 They give added mockery to this shell of a 
 castle. Here is "The History of Mehemet Ali ; " 
 there the " Histoire des Arabes;" yonder, Rob- 
 inson's " Palestine," and again here D'Ohsson's 
 " Tableau d'Empire Ottoman." Over a Turkish in- 
 scription I find one most characteristic volume, 
 contents omitted " Notes of Machiavelli and 
 Montesquieu." 
 
 After looking about the castle on the shore, we 
 mount the hill by a path. We are conducted by 
 the Armenian. He tells us that he farms the 
 property and that that is his consideration for 
 being its chdtelain. I ask : " Do you make any- 
 thing out of it?" 
 
 " Some years a little. Not much this year." 
 " How many hands do you employ ?" 
 "We have," he replies, "eight persons on the 
 island, including my boy here, Antoine, and my 
 
THE CASTLES. 2II 
 
 wife, who keeps house in the upper castle. The 
 other men are flailing the oats now and caring for 
 the six cows and one bull." 
 
 The path to the upper castle had once been laid 
 out with skill and fringed with flowers, '^^fleur- 
 de-lis has left its remnants here on the borders. 
 We pass old fig-trees that never fail to live where 
 there is a mouthful of dust, a few olive, ash, and 
 locust trees, remains of old buildings, oratories, 
 convents, and kiosks, and pedestals of carved mar- 
 ble and broken heads of columns, doubtless 
 ravished from old temples and never worked into 
 the projected architecture. Then we stand in 
 front of the main castle. It is surrounded by foli- 
 age. It has even in its ruin a fairylike look. 
 " Perhaps in this neglected spot " Sir Henry 
 hatched many a diplomatic .egg, or revelled in 
 many a bout with his attache's and friends. 
 
 There is a little touch of the Arabic in the 
 Gothic of the building which destroys its unity. 
 Large rocks and boulders lie about its esplanade. 
 Sheafs of grain are stacked, and some maize and 
 melon patches are on the terraces. 
 
 The building above is not. so stately as the 
 castle by the sea, but it is in better preservation 
 and is prettier. The rocks are clad in a red lichen ; 
 and vines in good condition are ;n eligible places. 
 Here and there are garden spots, in which are 
 gourds, pistachio nuts, melons, artichokes, and 
 
212 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 tomatoes in good growth. But the business looks 
 as if it had gone to seed ; so do the peasants, in 
 their Turkish fez, red Greek sash, and baggy 
 breeches. The only healthy and handsome gentle- 
 man on the isle is the bull. We come upon him 
 unexpectedly. He makes a quiet remark in his 
 own tongue, upon which I retreat suddenly. I 
 am happy to see that he is tethered to a stake, which 
 he could not pull up, by a chain he cannot break. 
 His five cows serenely chew their cuds, and give 
 no sign of surprise at our presence near the harem. 
 We stand in front of the castle. The chdt- 
 elaine appears. She is not romantic nor pretty, 
 but polite. The two men stop their flail and 
 come down the circular steps that lead to the por- 
 tal above. On this circled terrace are trees of 
 luxuriant growth and tangled vines in flower. 
 The front of the palace has its windows and doors 
 arched with brown and white stone from Chios. 
 The floors within the rooms are of marble mosaic, 
 and are not yet disarranged by neglect. The ceil- 
 ings of most of the rooms are low, and where the 
 rain has not entered, are as clean as when just 
 frescoed. There are mirrors all about, in the din- 
 ing, library, and other rooms. The colored glass 
 gives a dim religious light to the chambers. But 
 the feature of these apartments is the imitation 
 book-cases. These are cupboards, but their doors 
 are neatly painted with the binding and titles of 
 
SHELL OF A LIBRARY. 2 l$ 
 
 works of all kinds. This seems to have been the 
 ruling passion of Bulwer this outside display of 
 literature. I ask George to open one of the 
 book-cases. Ostensibly it was a library of vol- 
 umes on the English, French, German, and Turk- 
 ish ciiisine. He opens it, and a lot of bottles 
 filled with the vin du pays appear. This evokes 
 a smile all round ; but George does not tender us 
 a perusal of the contents of these brittle books. 
 Here are books entitled " Wine Drinkers," 
 " Geography," and " Metaphysics." Over one 
 door of this library is written in French: "// 
 faut vivre avec ses amis." Over another is the 
 same motto in Turkish. It seems strange that 
 Bulwer should seek such a secluded spot, where 
 friends could rarely come, and where, if the tradi- 
 tions are correct, he was rather limited in his se- 
 lection by number and sex. What a commentary 
 these chambers furnish of the elegant man of the 
 world this type of the accomplished strategist 
 in the wiles of diplomatic war ! 
 
 Upon these marble floors lie piles of oats 
 and broken straw for the kine, while the sound of 
 the flail keeps time where the golden bowl used 
 to flow and the viands of the epicure were wont 
 to steam. Now the common vegetable used for 
 the peasant's soup called sobitha a kind of seed 
 or nut, is spread in one room, while in another the 
 worm-eaten wooden floor has lost its power even 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 of storage. Upon these desolations the soft hues 
 of the stained archways give a melancholy lustre, 
 which the mirrors yet unbroken on ceiling and on 
 wall reflect in multiform shapes. Some pictures 
 are in the salle a manger, but they are not as fresh 
 as those I saw on the tombs of Egypt, four thou- 
 sand years old. 
 
 We pass up a stairway of white marble, 
 which is perfect, and the only perfect piece of 
 work remaining. Streaks of white light here shoot 
 through the round windows. Here, too, is another 
 illusory library. One cupboard has a lot of suppos- 
 ititious volumes entitled, " Is Wine Beneficial ? " 
 another in German " Drunken." Secret recesses 
 repeat these illusions. Here, over the bedstead, 
 in an alcove, is a case of " Rfoes " Dreams ! 
 The bedstead is elegant, but the family of the 
 Armenian peasant sleep upon the coarse quilt 
 which covers its gilding. Over the fireplaces are 
 volumes of " Day Dreams," another of " Visions." 
 The outlook over the castellated terrace up-stairs 
 shows the superb sea in its ultramarine robe, and 
 Stamboul the Beauteous ! The upper rooms 
 are hot and close. Some of the doors are screens 
 of flowers in applique, upon cloth, picturing vine, 
 leaf, and grape upon both sides. 
 
 These rooms are painful to behold, like the 
 wreck of a proud man in the glory of his youth. 
 Upon the floor below, in one of the rooms, 
 
TANGLES OF TIME. 215 
 
 there lie the disjecta membra of an alabaster vase of 
 proportionate elegance, and chased with the vine, 
 leaf and fruit. I asked George if he thought the 
 ex-Khedive's agent in Constantinople would sell 
 this. 
 
 "Yes, he would. In fact, it had been once sold 
 to an American, but he had never taken it nor 
 paid for it. Ali Effendi, at Kioskontak, on the 
 Bosphorus, is the agent. See him ! " 
 
 We passed out into the court. It is not large, 
 say 100 feet square. It has a fountain, but no 
 water. It has flowering shrubs, but their scent is 
 wild, as if the tangle of time had deprived them of 
 sweetness. Weeds, weeds, weeds all, an epitome 
 of the life of their former owner. Some of the 
 walls are tumbling down, and have props, but the 
 arches spring perennially beautiful in their various 
 stones from the island home of Homer. The 
 general color of the building is white, so that the 
 stains of time and weather are plainly apparent. 
 Still the towers remain, and the castellation is 
 clean cut against the sky. 
 
 The best-preserved portions of the castle are 
 the stables. They are quite roomy. What did 
 Sir Henry want of horses on so small an isle ? I 
 stumbled over an old grist stone made to grind 
 the grain as old as that which Mungo Park's ne- 
 gresses used when he was investigating Africa 
 the counterpart of that which is seen in Egypt to- 
 
2I 6 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 day. I can understand its utility here in this 
 lonely place. There are fishers' nets lying about 
 in which my feet are entrapped. Their raison 
 d'etre is also apparent, for Marmora is the sea for 
 fish par excellence. I can appreciate the pleasure 
 terrace beyond the palace, looking west, for here 
 the sentimental diplomat of the Bulwer type could 
 profitably muse as he looks off toward sunset 
 and Washington, where his Clayton-Bulwer treaty 
 is still discussed. I can appreciate also the garden 
 of figs and melons between this terrace and the 
 western end of the isle a wild, incongruous ro- 
 mance on durable rock ; for have we not regaled 
 ourselves upon the fresh fig and the delicious mel- 
 ons ? I can imagine a utility in the little lizard 
 which flashes into the sunlight out of the rocks, to 
 give my wife an ejaculatory surprise. Even the 
 snails which cling to the shrubbery have their use, if 
 only as a bait for fish. I can well imagine why the 
 kitchen, with its ovens and wood-house, is separated 
 from the castle, and which still has its use as a 
 chicken-house. The old petroleum cans that lie 
 around have their use as buckets. I can under- 
 stand the compensation which a place of this iso- 
 lated kind, so full of remoteness from the " cries 
 of the people who do come and go, " -furnishes to 
 the jaded intellect and the palled taste of the hot 
 and stifling city. I need not read Ruskin to give 
 emphasis to the utility of beauty, such as this pano- 
 
UTILITIES AND INUTILITIES. 2 1 7 
 
 rama establishes, with breezy fretwork upon the 
 blue sea, and its inspiration drawn so closely from 
 the fountains of nature. But I cannot fancy what 
 on earth Sir Henry could want, on such an isle, of 
 such stable room for a great stud of horses, who 
 could not caper very nimbly here without falling 
 off into the Marmora sea. 
 
 Perhaps the solution is found in the Quixotic 
 spirit which erected these castles in such an out- 
 of-the-way spot, or perhaps in the spirit of some 
 of the mock volumes whose titles I read in the 
 lower castle halls, as, ''Themes on the Impossible," 
 or " L' Advantages de la Lune et du Soleil Com- 
 pares," or " Charmes du Manage par un Garon 
 de 80 ans ; " for in their different-colored bindings, 
 blue, red, and green, these odd and outre" titles to 
 textless books render them pretty toilets to the 
 eye which thirsts for the realities which are not 
 within. 
 
 I said nearly every object here indicates de- 
 cay. There is an exception in front of the castle. 
 It is a good has relief of St. George and the 
 Dragon and an elegant monogram of " H. L. B." 
 This cipher is all that remains to attest the per- 
 sonality of the accomplished diplomatist, who, in 
 making these structures, built more than a Spanish 
 castle. The figments of his brother, Sir Edward 
 Lytton-Bulwer, and the poetry of the son (" Owen 
 Meredith "), who glorified Florence Nightingale by 
 
2i8 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 a song as sweet as that melodious bird itself can 
 sing, have left their permanent impressions upon 
 our time. But these ruins of mortar and stone, 
 glass and wood, have no meaning except to mark 
 the swift decadence of the statesman who erected 
 them, and of the fall from power of the ex-Khe- 
 dive, Ismail Pasha, who owns them. 
 
 Thus moralizing, we take our way, after making 
 remuneration to the Armenian keeper for his po- 
 liteness in showing us the realities of these castles, 
 which seem from the Bosphorus and from the other 
 isles like unreal chateaux en Espagne, or castles in 
 the air. We find at the landing the good launch 
 "Sunset" sitting like a bird upon the sea, impa- 
 tient to show off her brand new flag to these ward- 
 ers of this once strange diplomatic chateau. Our 
 ambitions take a more apostolic turn, and, forget- 
 ting diplomacy and its eccentricities, we steam over 
 the clear blue water to Antigone with our fishing 
 caique in the wake. There we enter the caique, 
 and fish for grand pois 'sons, while the launch darts 
 around the isle for the sustenance of our bodies, 
 i.e., lunch. What we caught is nothing to nobody. 
 But we brought home a splendid many-hued string 
 of memories with all the flavor and zest of castle 
 building, without the glamour of antiquity. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 PRINKIPO AS A HERMITAGE CLOISTERED AMENITIES 
 
 A RICH LIBRARY. 
 
 "THERE is the making of a monk in every man," 
 says Miss Cleveland, in her essay on monasticism. 
 As its complement, it might be said that there is 
 the making of a nun in every woman. Man is 
 more than half a recluse. More than half the 
 time he prefers to be cloistered. Certainly, if he 
 have studious or contemplative tendencies, and 
 had the opportunities and books, he would not 
 mind much isolation from his fellows. John Bun- 
 yan and Cervantes could fill up their time delight- 
 fully, even in jail. Men in these Eastern climes 
 have sought and yet seek the cave and the monas- 
 tery. When the world palls, or ambition is slaked, 
 or the passions are paralyzed, men, and women 
 too, seek diversion in the hermitage. This oc- 
 curred to me when I first looked at my Prinkipo 
 " Castle of Indolence," and isolation. I was ready 
 to say, as I looked at the enchantment of shore, 
 sea and sky : " Here is Nature's grace ! Here are 
 the open windows of heaven ! Here dawn and 
 eve color the vault and deck the blue waves. 
 
 219 
 
22O 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 Here are cosy nooks and seats of vantage, far from 
 public work and resort. Here 
 
 " Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, 
 And their toys to the great children leave ; 
 Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave." 
 
 After a visit to the hermit of Halki, I was more 
 than ever disposed to bless my stars that, for a 
 time at least, I had the privilege of a home remote 
 from all worldly associations, and even from the 
 usual noises and excitements of the isle. After a 
 little, however, my sociality began to assert itself. 
 The little children, the very dogs, chickens and 
 donkeys evoked it. Within our villa and garden 
 there were few or no intrusions. I was content to 
 dream and read, to read and write, until ordered 
 up the mountain for a sanitary stroll. 
 
 When I came to this villa my first adventure 
 was to the library. The son of the proprietress 
 had been crowned at Cambridge, England, as first 
 in classics. His library, though not large, was 
 pleasing and select. I remembered what Caliban 
 had said of Prospero in the Isle of "The Tem- 
 pest:" 
 
 " Remember to possess his books ! " 
 
 I had practised on this Shakesperian edict. One 
 of my victims was our city landlord. I levied on 
 him before I began to prey on the villa library. 
 
MISSIRIE 'S LIBRAR Y. 22 j 
 
 That is why and how I had become master of a 
 library of my own. 
 
 The hotel most famous in Constantinople is the 
 Hotel d'Angleterre. It used to be kept by Mis- 
 sirie. The soldiers in the Crimean war called his 
 hotel " Misery." My experience in 1881 was that, 
 since it has been kept by the Greek, Logothetti, 
 "word-bearer," it was well kept. I had then the 
 best room, overlooking the Bosphorus and the Sea 
 of Marmora, and I ought to have been content. 
 It was not misery. I was content 
 
 In rummaging around in the old and odd places 
 of the hotel I found that travellers to the East for 
 fifty years had left books and what not, and that 
 they were gathered in the dusty holes and recon- 
 dite shelves of the hotel. I used to spoil my clean 
 linen by exploiting these places for literary spoil. 
 One book which I found was the volume of an Aus- 
 trian secretary at Moscow, quite confidentially giv- 
 ing a narrative of naked facts about Peter the Great 
 and his diabolism. Only one other copy of the 
 work was ever found. That one was discovered 
 by Eugene Schuyler at Naples. The rest, in the 
 interest and honor of the Czars and their regime, 
 had been destroyed. 
 
 On my return to Constantinople, in 1885, I 
 went rummaging again. I found that volume 
 gone. Making a bargain with M. Logothetti, I 
 " launched " off to Prinkipo quite a lot of these 
 
222 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 waifs. They are before me. Here is one ! It 
 has on its fly-leaf the name of Lady Mary Wort- 
 ley Montagu. But can it be her signature? If it 
 were, it would be doubly enhanced. It is only a 
 Gazetteer of the "known world" in 1815, with "im- 
 provements" by Dr. Brookes, of London. It is 
 printed for J. Burnpus. It opens with a map of the 
 world of 1815, from the "best authorities." The 
 imaginary and abstract lines like the poles and 
 circles are in the map, in geometric symmetry ; 
 but between Capricorn and Cancer the goat and 
 the crab in Africa, is " Negro-land," avast space. 
 There is hardly a name between that of " Hot- 
 tentot" and " Barbary." What a filling of space, 
 since by the De Brazzas and the Stanleys, by the 
 Spekes, Livingstones, and Bakers ! 
 
 Among the definitions of this Gazetteer is this : 
 " That a hill is a small kind of mountain !" This 
 remarkable book begins with four " Aa's." They 
 are rivers in Samogitia, Picardy, etc. It ends 
 with Zytomicrz a town in Poland, but pasted at 
 the end of the zeds, is a poem whose last verse is : 
 
 " And woman woman ever bright ! 
 I loved thee most, when least sincere." 
 
 The Gazetteer spells Michigan, Michagan ; Chi- 
 cago as a river or village is not even named. 
 Turning mechanically to the word " Limburg," the 
 Gazetteer says : " It is the place for excellent 
 
OLD GAZETTEER. 
 
 cheese." " Limestone, or Maysville, Ky.," is in 
 the catalogue. Pennsylvania is celebrated for 
 neither coal, iron, nor oil ; but for potash, furs, 
 skins, and wax. Philadelphia the Turks call it 
 Allahhijah had then only two thousand Chris- 
 tians. I beg pardon ; that is the old Philadelphia 
 near Smyrna, where there was one of the seven 
 churches. The capital of Penn's State is said by 
 Mr. J. Bumpus, to have grown so fast that in the 
 lifetime of the first person born in it, it contained 
 forty thousand people. As my mother was born 
 there, it was not exactly a city of brotherly, but of 
 motherly love ; and I am proud to have it said in 
 the Gazetteer that it is near New York and has a 
 magnificent State-house and a Philosophical hall. 
 Illinois is set down as a river in Indiana. New 
 Haven is celebrated for its card-teeth, college, and 
 buttons. Ohio is a State with five districts, of 
 which New Connecticut is one. There are " no 
 slaves " there. Marietta is its largest town ; but 
 Chillicothe is the capital. Massachusetts is well 
 watered and produces plenty of maize, hemp, and 
 copper ! It has a machine for cutting nails, in- 
 vented by Jacob Perkins, which makes 200,000 
 nails a day ! That State makes 1,900,000 gallons 
 of distilled spirits a year ! New York State has 
 wheat for its staple and abounds in fine lakes. 
 The city of New York is fifteen miles in length, 
 but hardly one in breadth. It has " no basin or 
 
224 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 bay for the reception of ships, but the road where 
 they lie in East river is defended from the terrific 
 violence of the sea by some islands, which inter- 
 lock each other ! " What a commentary on Long, 
 Staten, and other islets, and Hell-gate and its 
 dynamitic thunders and forces ! Is New York 
 equipped for education and goodness ? Yes. It 
 has "a noble seminary called Columbia College 
 and a magnificent edifice called Federal Hall, 
 where the illustrious Washington took the oath ! 
 It has a botanical garden. In time of peace it has 
 commerce ! In time of war it is insecure. It has 
 no marine force. 
 
 Philippi is recorded in the Gazetteer only as a 
 town in Macedonia. It is not said that Cassius 
 and Brutus met there at a cross-roads grocery to 
 drink the health of Augustus and Antony, before 
 Christ some forty-two years. Of China it is said 
 that it excels in kitchen-gardens and cultivates the 
 bottom of its rivers. It has trees on which is 
 raised tallow ! The Chinese complexion is a sort 
 of tawny ; and those who are thought to be most 
 handsome are the most bulky. The Chinamen 
 affect pomposity, but their houses are low. The 
 empire existed before Noah's flood. They drink 
 a liquor called ft rack." It is not added what kind 
 of a racket it makes when exported into such 
 unknown realms as Wyoming and California ! 
 Is California gazetteered ? Yes. It is put down 
 
CURIOUS CHANGES. 22 * 
 
 as a peninsula. It is separated from the coast by 
 the Vermilion sea. Of this my friend the pub- 
 lisher and learned author, Bancroft, of San Fran- 
 cisco, will take heed. Galvez found a pearl fish- 
 ery in its gulf I reckon of Colorado. He 
 found mines of gold of a very promising appear- 
 ance. Most Californians use a girdle and a piece 
 of linen for clothing; but further north the Cali- 
 fornians use shells for ornament and live in caves. 
 Its chief town is St. Juan, which makes a wine like 
 Madeira. 
 
 Saratoga is a town and a fort. It is on the east 
 side of the Hudson. Not to be prolix, the 
 United States itself is summed up in this Gazet- 
 teer as seventeen States. They are well sup- 
 plied with rivers, great and small, springs, and 
 lakes. In the large towns the houses are of 
 brick ; in the others and their environs, of planks ; 
 but eighty miles from the sea, in the Central and 
 Southern States, seven-tenths of the inhabitants 
 live in log houses. These houses are made of the 
 trunks of trees. They are from twenty to thirty 
 feet long and four or five inches in diameter. 
 They are laid upon one another and support their 
 ends into each other. The spaces between the 
 trunks are filled with clay. They have two doors, 
 which are hung with wooden hinges. These 
 doors frequently supply the place of windows. 
 Neither nails nor iron of anv sort are used. 
 15 
 
226 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 All this was long before the rivalry between Chi- 
 cago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. 
 
 To one interested in our census since 1810 this 
 Gazetteer makes a picture of contrasts interesting 
 and economic. 
 
 " The chinkin' and daubin' " of even the log 
 cabins of the 1840 campaign seem, to one who has 
 passed through our civil war, as quite a rearward 
 object of domestic architecture. 
 
 Comparing this description with that of Con- 
 stantinople in the Gazetteer, how great the 
 changes ! These changes indicate civilizing ener- 
 gies even in the capital of Turkey. The descrip- 
 tion of Constantinople almost suits its present con- 
 dition ; but not quite. Its towers and walls its 
 castles and multitudinous houses are the same ! 
 St. Sophia, with its room for 100,000 worshippers, 
 remains. The seraglio burned down some twenty 
 years ago. A railroad now runs around those old 
 walls, out of which the odalisqites of Abdul Mejid 
 peeped thirty years ago, when I first saw it. The 
 bazaars are the same. The Jewish and Armenian 
 traders are the same; but the "great number of 
 girls from Hungary, Greece, Circassia, and 
 Georgia, for the service of the Turks," have 
 greatly diminished. The ambassadors, now as 
 then, live on the Pera side of the Golden Horn ; 
 but the fifty thousand graceful caiques no longer 
 ply upon the Bosphorus for general transporta- 
 
CHANGES IN STAMBOUL. ~~~ 
 
 227 
 
 tion. The Shirket company runs steam ferries 
 up and down the straits, and the azure sky is 
 stained with their coal soot and smoke. A car, 
 run by an endless chain and by the vapor of water, 
 lifts the passenger from the shore at Galata to 
 the top of Pera heights. A street railway plies 
 its work and sounds its horn not only upon the 
 newly-widened streets of Pera, but even in the 
 narrow streets of Stamboul, upon whose travel or 
 travail there look out of the jalousies of the Mos- 
 lem the beauties of the haremlik ! 
 
 Outside of the great city are the same treeless 
 hills and furrowed vales. Here and there they 
 are green and laughing with cultivation, and not 
 unspeckled with the splendid black and white 
 sheep and goats of the suburbs. As far as the 
 eye can see, the glorious panorama of mountain 
 and water, with the grand prospect of domes, 
 minarets, palaces, armories, arsenals, and barracks, 
 is spread out for the wondering and admiring 
 gaze. The old commanding situation for com- 
 merce and empire remains, and will ever remain. 
 
 The same Eastern imbroglio continues, from the 
 same old motives, from the same great and greedy 
 powers. Gradually the European elements are 
 encroaching upon Asiatic features and policy. It 
 may be that, before the new century dawns, the 
 dreams of Peter the Great will be realized ; or 
 else that the Greek under some noble impulse, 
 
228 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 and from consenting and non-conflicting elements, 
 may resume his worship in St. Sophia and his 
 control from the palace of Blachernae. It may 
 be that the capital of old Byzantium will become a 
 free port. All this is problematical, for the Turk 
 may remain under better conditions. Eastward 
 the star of empire may take its way, even though 
 it glimmer within the horns of the crescent. 
 
 But I was rummaging in my villa library among 
 the lost tribe of books of the old Missirie hostelry. 
 It is the same as ever as in all libraries ; for all 
 libraries when analyzed have their chance compan- 
 ions. Here is a learned treatise by Lord Lindsay 
 on " Christian Art," with its symbolism and 
 mythology, written originally for " Sir Coutts Lind- 
 say, Baronet." It is said to have wings for the 
 artist to the gate of heaven ! Its uncut volumes 
 are as clean as the subject; never having been 
 other than idealized by the sacred quality of the 
 author's mind. Next to these volumes is Eugene 
 Sue's " Martin the Foundling." It has his por- 
 trait in the French toilet of 1847. The book is 
 illustrated by Shepherd. It shows the prevalent 
 taste in unchristian art and literature four decades 
 ago. Hallam next kisses George Eliot's "Gipsy." 
 Plans of fortifications for Crimean struggles lie 
 dormant, next to books on the peace of Christ 
 which passeth all understanding of their proxim- 
 ity. Hepworth Dixon bounds into the arena, 
 
PL ORE NCR NIGHTINGALE AND SO YER. 2 2Q 
 
 along with a dozen books of highly-colored litho- 
 graphs showing the " Dawnings of Light in the 
 East ! " A score of volumes descriptive of all the 
 lands and peoples from Bagdad to Carthage, with 
 here and there love-tokens sent as bookmarks, and 
 flowers from Bethlehem, whose faint odors are all 
 too emblematic ! Mitford's full volumes on Greece 
 sit down with " Gentle Elia," Bulwer's " Rienzi," 
 Tom Moore's " Lalla Rookh," Cicero, and " Eo- 
 then. " But who spreads the feast for these ana- 
 chronistic people? Who? Why, the very prince 
 of the cuisine himself. Soyer makes a " culinary 
 campaign," which he calls historical reminiscences 
 of the late war (Crimean), with the plain art of 
 cookery ! 
 
 This culinary champion was a confederate of 
 Florence Nightingale in the campaign which she 
 made against the evils of war, in the hospitals of 
 Scutari. In this volume he dishes up many his- 
 torical delicacies. He makes up in succulence of 
 detail what he lacks in literary proficiency ! Per- 
 haps no one in that singular war achieved more 
 reputation than this great chief of the kitchen. 
 He was a practical man. When not organizing 
 his suite in the hospital kitchen for the disabled 
 and wounded soldier, he was purveying in a kind- 
 lier office. That his life was not entirely fruitless 
 of good, his volume fully demonstrates ; for after 
 his laborious campaign, in bidding adieu to his 
 readers, he says : 
 
230 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 " I do not intend to remain Soyer Tranquille, 
 but I hope to be the means of causing a lasting 
 amelioration in the cooking for all public institu- 
 tions. Such a result of my labors, after my long 
 culinary experience, ought to make an author 
 happy indeed, and I hope for the future to be 
 found as traced below." Here follows, as the curi- 
 ous finale of a useful and benevolent life, his own 
 picture, as he sits felicitously over a glass of Cha- 
 teau Yquem, in some celestial cuisine above the 
 stars ! 
 
 All through this odd volume of Alexis Soyer 
 Miss Nightingale sings her quiet music of 
 humanity so sweet amid the sensual palate pleas- 
 ures, that "we know not we are listening to it." 
 
 From all the ends of the earth and from all the 
 aeons of time come forth from Missirie's dusty 
 volumes these controversial, didactic, military, 
 theologic, descriptive, cuisinistic and classic folk 
 dressed in garbs as various as those which make 
 the Stamboul bridge a perpetual kaleidoscope ! 
 Here, in Misery's hotel as some one has sung, 
 but whose music I cannot recall in verse here the 
 rage of controversy ends ; zealots become friends, 
 Socinians abide with Calvinists, and those other 
 Calvinists or Kismetians of Mohammed meet 
 Catholic and Quaker and 
 
 " Bellemarine has rest at Luther's feet. " 
 
ORIENT PEARLS. 2 1 1 
 
 I am forbidden by my wife and other powers to 
 write for publication on political and social themes 
 pertinent to this capital of diplomacy. Having, 
 however, the cacoethes equal to any Scotchman, I 
 must be writing something at odd moments. If I 
 cannot make literature of a higher grade, may I 
 not take glances at those who have been creators 
 of that order of work ? 
 
 It is difficult to find any " Orient pearls" not 
 already discovered and strung. And yet these 
 wonderful seas and waters ought to be gemmed at 
 bottom : but where one wo~uld find pearls he 
 only gets sponges ! It takes away my breath 
 when I think of trying to write of some new thing 
 here. Or, to keep to the metaphor, as in the 
 pearl fisheries of the Red Sea, I am not unlike the 
 diver who does not often obtain the pearls, but, 
 reckless of sharks and death otherwise, he is con- 
 tent with filling his lungs for three minutes and 
 loading his feet with a stone, and, dropping his 
 ballast, to arise with one oyster, whose pearl is 
 not always equal to the effort and occasion. 
 
 Yet what a sea for pearls of thought pearls of 
 great price is this Mediterranean, which through 
 divers ways leads up to this capital of capitals ! 
 The Mediterranean is called by the Turks the 
 White Sea. It is blue, but cheerful as the white 
 light of unclouded day. It is tideless, but what 
 tides has it not witnessed in the affairs of men 
 
232 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 taken at the flood by some and at the ebb 
 by others ? It is the sea of historic movements 
 as well as of musical cadences. Troy, Carthage, 
 Byzantium, Athens, Rome, Alexandria - - ever 
 romantic and commercial, classic and barbaric ! 
 Over its waters Crusaders came ; amid its isles 
 Venetian and Genoese sailed. Now upon its 
 bosom steamers of Russia, Austria, France and 
 England ply with ceaseless interchange. But an 
 American vessel with the star-spangled banner- 
 never. 
 
 " SOYKR TRES HEUREUX ! " 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE LIBRARY UNDER NEW ASPECTS. 
 
 Again the precept of Shakespeare is heard : 
 " Remember to possess his books." 
 
 Without them, Prospero had not one spirit to 
 command ! When I made the lease of this villa 
 there came into our possession all the lore of the 
 Cambridge scholar, much of which was all Greek 
 to me, especially the modern Greek. It was my 
 custom in the morning, when .the air was cool and 
 fresh, to promenade, book in hand, up to the half- 
 way seat on the mountain side. > Here I could 
 read undisturbed. Here, I re-read Homer, not 
 merely in English, but in the original, with much 
 marking and remarking between the lids of my 
 scholarly landlord's copy. 
 
 The confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau were 
 found in this library, lying close to some religious 
 Armenian literature. I perused them for the first 
 time under these skies, where Rousseau's father 
 used to live and work too, as watchmaker to His 
 Majesty, the Sultan! How strangely this senti- 
 
 233 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 mental yet gross Franco-Swiss philosopher, with 
 his love of nature and nastiness, his amours and 
 his amiableness impresses one ! His style is so 
 lucent and his artlessness so absolute, that one 
 need not wonder that his social theories, arrayed 
 in alluring garb, caught the fancy and enthralled 
 the emotions of his time. 
 
 By adding some of my own favorite volumes to 
 these bookish anchorites of our villa, I have read- 
 ing enough. I can accomplish more than Home 
 Tooke did when he was in prison ; for not only 
 have I the " Diversions of Purley" in studying 
 radically many tongues, but I can delve literally 
 into the old earth herself, with Rousseau, in search 
 of medicinal roots, to gratify my botanic fancies. 
 
 Besides having the launch and the free sea, 
 the flag and " interterritoriality," I am as un- 
 hampered as the botanizing bee or butterfly in our 
 garden, that flies from flower to flower at its own 
 sweet will. But this freedom of motion is not the 
 idea of a hermitage. 
 
 One of the precious little diamonds in literature, 
 which was presented to me by a D.D., whom we 
 call the " Dreadful Dragoman," is that of P. Gyllii, 
 on the " Topographia of Constantinople." Its 
 frontispiece has the imprimatur and flavor of 
 Munich. It was printed in 1632. It is two hun- 
 dred and fifty years old. Two angels in the 
 frontispiece draw up two curtains between classic 
 
DIVERSIONS IN THE LIBRAR Y. 
 
 columns, in order to display the old city with its 
 mosques and khans. Beneath is* a picture of the 
 Seraglio Point. The houses were far apart then, 
 and the foliage abundant. The same kind of 
 boats float on the current as those of the present 
 day. It is a picture of the city under the Sultans 
 in its primal splendor. 
 
 I must not omit a glance into an unpretending 
 volume by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, which illus- 
 trates the institutions of ancient Athens. If it be 
 not accurately historic, it is provocative of the 
 study of Mitford, whose nine volumes have each a 
 significant picture, a rich text and learned notes. 
 Bulwer not only illustrates the matchless genius 
 and glory of Greece, but the interesting struggles 
 which her states carried on in these colonial 
 waters, upon whose bosom to-day ride steamers 
 which the classic Greek with all his fleet Mercuries 
 and potential Neptunes never imagined. Some of 
 his chapters and scenes take me to the very boun- 
 daries of Bulgaria, where a Battenberg prince 
 now keeps the Balkans in perpetual turmoil. I 
 confess to a prejudice against Hessians, which 
 these summer studies from this library have 
 strengthened : but I must not confound Prince 
 Alexander of Hesse Darmstadt with that venal 
 scoundrel of Hesse Cassel, who sold his subjects 
 to King George III. of England, to destroy the 
 colonies of America. 
 
236 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 From the perusal of these histories of human 
 degeneracy, how happy to find the works of the 
 " Gentle Elia." They bring back the remem- 
 brances of summer days, like those we pass here ; 
 and of delightful years, before diplomacy required 
 reserve. His words " Spoken at the Mermaid!" 
 and his sonnets of sweetness and quaint conceits 
 give a vivacity which no carking care about 
 Harpoot schools or Bulgarian atrocities can ever 
 dispel from our diplomatic mind. 
 
 Here, too, is found hidden between Greek and 
 Armenian tomes, Longworth's " Year Among the 
 Circassians." It was published in 1840. It has 
 some old lithographs of the interiors of Circassian 
 homes. These are rude huts. Few articles of 
 necessity and none of luxury are shown in the pict- 
 ure. Here is a man with a turban. He wears a 
 black beard and a blouse. On his breast are 
 a score of cartridges arrayed tastefully. He 
 sports light stockings and the usual pointed 
 shoes. A saddle and gun, a curved sword 
 and a blanket, with an ottoman sofa or so, for re- 
 clining at meals, or for rest, make up the furni- 
 ture. A fire of faggots is at one end of the hut. 
 There a tea kettle is boiling. A graceful girl, in 
 a pretty bodice of dark material, a skirt of light 
 color, and a tasteful unique head-dress is the cen- 
 tral female figure. A sheep at the door, and a 
 brace of dogs near by, are the accompaniments. 
 

 
CIRCASSIAN HOMES. 
 
 The household is serving a Persian, Turkish or 
 Jewish visitor with meats and cups of refresh- 
 ment. The hospitality is unbounded. This is 
 the scene, nearly a half century ago, before 
 Schamyl was conquered and the Russian had tri- 
 umphed over native valor and mountain fastness. 
 
 But the Turk had long before then conquered, 
 by his gold and other agents, the beauties of these 
 mountain homes, for his harems. Buying and 
 selling slaves for wives was then a legal matter. 
 The mountain beauties liked to be sold out of 
 their rude modes of living into the luxurious 
 ease of the grand capital. Any stranger who 
 interfered with the affair of the hadji, or 
 merchant, was left to the cold sympathies of 
 those most nearly interested. The father, or 
 husband, not only often acquiesced in the trans- 
 action, but it was not considered disreputable for 
 an ouzden, or a freeman in good circumstances, to 
 sell his own children. The advantages of a 
 settlement in a good harem in Turkey, was the 
 animus of this business which has given most of 
 the women and mothers to the Turkish harems. 
 Besides, these females received a pretty good edu- 
 cation in Turkey, including religious teaching. 
 Their condition was bettered. Marriage in Tur- 
 key, as I show in another chapter, is comparative 
 freedom. It was not freedom they wanted, but 
 ease and slippered luxury. Fancy gilded their 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 future. They used to bring a higher price if they 
 were something beyond a tobacco-smoking hanoum. 
 Housewifery enhanced their price. Sometimes 
 the best and prettiest were placed in establish- 
 ments, where, under matronly care, they learned 
 to read and write, acquired some Arabic and Per- 
 sian literature, and were taught how to deport 
 themselves gracefully and graciously. It mat- 
 tered not if they were property, when, after they 
 could display their graces of mind and body, they 
 could rise to independence. They could be thus 
 weaned from the dependence which made them 
 submissive to the haughtier sex even in their own 
 Circassian household. When ushered into a more 
 entrancing sphere, let us not. be surprised at 
 seeing in these women of the Circassian moun- 
 tains those gentle qualities, controlling the hardier 
 sex, which form the most attractive features 
 of the Turkish woman, with her languishing 
 eye and splendid figure. The very Spartan 
 vigor and fierceness of the Circassian man, which 
 forbade him to see his wife except stealthily, while 
 it destroyed much of his affectionate nature, 
 gave to the female under such discipline and 
 reserve a constrained and modest demeanor, 
 which is a most seductive part of her loveliness. 
 After many generations, and with the delights and 
 comforts of her new home and the bath, she obtains 
 a complete mastery over herself, and her Turkish 
 
GE OR GIAN BE A UTIES. 230 
 
 husband and lord. That mastery extends to her 
 children. This makes her a provoking conun- 
 drum to the Frank, and a fascinating dream to all 
 who behold her. 
 
 The Georgian has a beauty quite different from 
 that of the Circassian. The Circassian is daz- 
 zling, queenlike and stately. She has a fair skin. 
 She is elegant in form. She is kindly and gentle in 
 voice, but lazy in movement and without esprit. 
 One of her own sex has said: " there is no soul in a 
 Circassian beauty; and as she pillows her pure, pale 
 cheek upon her small dimpled hand, you feel no 
 inclination to arouse her into exertion ; you are 
 contented to look upon her and to contemplate 
 her loveliness." The Georgian is a creature with 
 eyes like meteors, and teeth almost as dazzling as 
 her eyes. Her mouth does not wear the sweet 
 and unceasing smile of her less vivacious rival ; 
 but the proud expression that sits upon her finely 
 arched lips accords so well with her stately form 
 and lofty brow that you do not seek to change its 
 character. 
 
 I have an impression that the Georgian is 
 quite a dominant element in Turkey through the 
 mother. We lose sight of this in our confused 
 estimates of the Orient and its domestic influences. 
 
 Ever since the i8th of September, 1885, the 
 "ant-hill" of Pera, where the diplomatic people 
 winter, and the palaces of Bayukdere and Thera- 
 
240 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 pia, where they summer, have been in incessant 
 moil and toil over the perpetual question of the 
 East. Many of the books which I found at Mis- 
 serie's old Hotel d'Angleterre, and which I was 
 allowed to import to Prinkipo, were on this subject. 
 They were not diverting ; and yet they were full 
 of eventualities which never happened, and of 
 prophesies of new phases in which fresh delimita- 
 tions of frontier and changes of dynasties came 
 and went in mosaic confusion. They show the 
 futility of a priori reasoning. They were big 
 with the fate of empires and of men, but other- 
 wise little. One prospect appears all through 
 this class of literature. It is a " Dawning in the 
 East " which has never yet dawned. And yet 
 where else should there be dawn ? I open a vol- 
 ume with this phrase as a title. It was written 
 at Bagdad in 1853. Was that locality too far 
 East to enjoy a dawn ? This writer indulged in 
 roseate hopes for the Jews in Persia, Kurdistan 
 and Chaldea ; but the past thirty years have not 
 verified his optimistic predictions, either as to Jew 
 or Gentile. The Euphrates still runs down, the 
 tents of the Bedouin are still on its banks and the 
 projected railroad of the .valley is still a dream of 
 the engineer. 
 
 But the missionaries continue their work ; and, 
 although surrounded by Bedouins, we have the 
 same good report every day of advancement in 
 
PROGNOSTICATIONS. 24! 
 
 teaching the native as to his life and letters, and 
 the prevalence of brigandage by Circassian vil- 
 lains. 
 
 My view of Turkey is more hopeful. From the 
 Robert College, if permitted to continue its work, 
 may come the redemption of the time and of Asia 
 Minor, Syria and the Balkans. Princes may come 
 and princes may go into these struggling lands, 
 but at last the potent secret will be revealed, and 
 the light of America will illume the forlorn peasant 
 homes of these historic and much-vexed lands. 
 
 What next ? A weather-stained volume called 
 " Turkey and its Resources," by Urquart, pub- 
 lished in 1853. The author is more economic 
 than prophetic. He had inklings that the adhe- 
 sion of the various parts of Turkey were soon to be 
 a thing of the past ; and yet he was surprised that 
 Turkey still was languishing and lingering. He 
 finds the secret of this cohesion of empire in muni- 
 cipal organization. This was not an accident, in 
 his opinion, but an organic principle of Arabic 
 legislation. The free states of Greece were the 
 models, in fact the origin, of this Home Rule, which 
 binds the tribes of the East in some sort of unity. 
 One of the strange things which this author dis- 
 cerned and which the Turks could not understand 
 was : How can a free land tax commerce and sur- 
 vive. This problem is commended to my own 
 countrymen for solution. 
 
 16 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 One volume, in gilt attire like a pasha at Bairam, 
 fairly leaps out of its shelf to greet my eye with 
 its large and elegant typography and its interest- 
 ing contents. It is the fifteenth edition of Sir 
 Edward Creasy's " Fifteen Decisive Battles of the 
 World, from Marathon to Waterloo." Upon the 
 fly-leaf I find the name of my landlord, with the 
 script : " First in classics, Xmas '66. L. F. B." and 
 on the cover, in grand style, two phoenixes, not 
 one only as it is fabled, and over them " RUGBY 
 SCHOOL." If the date were only contemporaneous 
 with " Tom Brown," or Dr. Arnold, there would 
 be added another employment for analogy. 
 
 On the occasion of urging upon Congress the 
 erection of the Saratoga monument, I had said 
 that Saratoga was one of the pivotal battles of 
 the world. I find Saratoga in this volume. It is 
 headed by Bishop Berkeley's poetic " Star of 
 Empire," and Lord Mahon's pregnant words : 
 <4 that the surrender of the thirty-five hundred 
 fighting men at Saratoga, had been so fruitful of 
 results, that it not only changed the relations of 
 mankind and the feelings of England toward the 
 American colonies, but it modified for all time to 
 come the connection between every colony and 
 every parent state." Mentally, I made the com- 
 ment which the recent excitement about Ireland 
 suggested. What eventful connections have since 
 grown out of the insurgence of the thirteen col- 
 
ENGLISH POWER. 
 
 onies toward the vast colonial dependency of 
 Great Britain ! 
 
 Hanging on the wall in this suggestive library 
 is a chart of the power of Great Britain. Every 
 continent is represented. Her immense dominion 
 is typified by various races pictured on the chart. 
 Along with it, as the commentary, come to my 
 mind the stirring words of Gladstone, as I heard 
 them uttered at the Robert American College 
 commencement in July, by a Celtic boy with a 
 Bulgarian brogue, who recited the conclusion of 
 the great oration on behalf of a statutory Parlia- 
 ment and Home Rule for Ireland ! A pardonable 
 patriotic pride in the college, and in the doctrine 
 and in the contest at Saratoga, and even in the 
 testy Englishman, General Gates, whom I never 
 could admire, begat much toleration even toward 
 the traitor, Benedict Arnold. For had he not, in 
 disregard of orders, given his splendid personal 
 courage to that pivotal battle, whose results the 
 reluctant step-parent was all too slow to recognize, 
 but which the world has not failed to honor ? 
 
 It is one of the " Pleasures of Prinkipo" that in 
 this library, and from Lord Byron's poetry and 
 Michel de Montaigne's essays, I have taken fresh 
 quaffs of nectared delight. Byron's fine appre- 
 ciation of the East and Montaigne's scholar- 
 ship, frankness and genius have filled up many 
 golden hours and sped them with flying feet. 
 
244 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 Byron, more than any other poet, not excepting 
 Lamartine, has disentangled the sensuous pleas- 
 ure and historic appreciation of the Orient, and 
 woven the many-tinted threads into robes of im- 
 purpled texture. If his " Bride of Abydos " is 
 silly, as a tale, its scenes of domestic seclusion, 
 and its gorgeous pictures of water, sky and earth, 
 diamonds, stars and flowers, never fail to be 
 quoted by the young who repair hither to fill their 
 golden urns of imagery, and by the old, who 
 renew here their early dreams of luxuriant life. 
 
 As a foil and contrast to this literature of the 
 Orient, I happen upon a half-covered volume of 
 Frankenstein. It was penned fifty years and more 
 ago, when this sombre literature enthralled the 
 literary world. But where now is the weird mon- 
 ster of Mary Shelley's prolific imagination ? And 
 yet, in this day of marvels in physical science, the 
 creation of a human frame by human skill, and 
 endowing it with the principle of life, may not 
 seem as bold as it did in 1831. But as a figment 
 of the brain, it is, as the author urges, of the same 
 type as the " Iliad," the " Tempest," and " Paradise 
 Lost." Its first scene is laid in the region of the 
 frozen North ; but its bewildering magic emanates 
 from the Orient. What Paracelsus and Albertus 
 Magnus taught, are they not prefigured in the 
 monstrous beings of the " Thousand and One 
 Nights ? " The idea of constructing a being of gi- 
 
THE MAGICIANS OF THE EAST. 245 
 
 gantic mould and infusing into it the vital spark, 
 together with the terrible Nemesis of the story, is 
 of the Orient, all complete. Beside, is not the 
 Orient the home of the Magi ? Have not the 
 fire worshippers made its sacred fires perennial 
 and poetical ? Even at this day, the naphtha of 
 Baku has its religious associations, to which the 
 muse of Moore gave melody. How small the 
 world of fact and fancy is ! How near akin are 
 the delusions of the past to the science of the 
 present ! Aye, even in these library shelves of 
 Prinkipo, I gaze with awe, not unmixed with 
 wonder, upon two books bound in bloody red, 
 which connect my daily diplomatic duty with the 
 poetry of the past and the rites of the Parsee. 
 The next chapter will elucidate the relation. 
 
 It would fill a volume were I to recount 
 the rich variety of the thesaurus of the library 
 which came to us with our villa. Here on one 
 shelf is Sir John Lubbock's " Origin of Civiliza- 
 tion " and " Primeval Man." In strange juxtapo- 
 sition I find the complete works of Moliere. On 
 opening the latter I find this commendation by his 
 editor: "Deux species sont passes, dit avec raison 
 M. Bagou, et nous at tendons encore" Moliere's 
 genius of comedy has had more than his 
 two centuries, but wherever the keen French 
 wit predominates, as it does in the Orient, his 
 works are perused with much riant enthusiasm. 
 
246 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 Alongside of Herschel's " Physical Geography," 
 with its revelations of our earth and seas, lands 
 and minerals, snows and rain falls, caloric and 
 magnetism, I find a strange volume whose title is 
 "Inquire Within Upon Everything." On inquir- 
 ing, I find an interesting discussion which vindi- 
 cates the letter H in the English vocabulary, or 
 rather its omission, as being a correct mode of 
 speech. In fact, this book answers all queries 
 from the killing of vermin to the style of a frock; 
 from the selection of a dining-table to the carving 
 of a turkey or the decoration of a room. 
 
 Here in one corner of the library I find, 
 "Boner Hunting Chamois in the Alps;" in 
 another place, " A Golden Treasury of Lyrics." 
 "Zadkiel's Astrology" astonishes, by its prox- 
 imity to " The Chemistry of Common Life." 
 Macaulay and the " Waverley Novels" are 
 snugly hid along with Thucydides and Plutarch. 
 Paley shakes hands with our own Maury, and 
 " Henry Esmond" with Homer, ^Eschines and the 
 whole cohort of Greeks. Here is Carey's Gradus ! 
 It takes us up the heights of Olympus. But is 
 there anything in the library pertinent to my own 
 life in the East ? Yes : " Chesterfield's Letters to 
 his Son." I open it at page 301. It gives me ad- 
 vice for a most pressing emergency at the Porte. 
 "Why is it," it asks, "that negotiators have 
 always been the politest and best bred men in the 
 
CHESTERFIELD 'S AD VICE FOLLO WED. 
 
 world in company?" Ahem! Then he proceeds 
 to say : 
 
 " For God's sake, never lose view of these two, 
 your capital objects : bend everything to them, try 
 everything by their rules, and calculate everything 
 for their purposes. What is peculiar to these two 
 objects is, that they require nothing but what 
 one's own vanity, interest and pleasure would 
 make one do independently of them. If a man 
 were never to be in business, and always to lead a 
 private life, would he not desire to please and to 
 persuade ? S.o that in your two destinations your 
 fortune and figure luckily conspire with your van- 
 ity and your pleasures. Nay more ; a foreign 
 minister, I will maintain it, can never be a good 
 man of business if he is not an .agreeable man of 
 pleasure too. Half his business is done by the 
 help of his pleasures ; his views are carried on, 
 and perhaps best, and most unsuspectedly, at 
 balls, suppers, assemblies, and parties of pleasure ; 
 by intrigues with women, and connections insensi- 
 bly formed with men, at those unguarded hours of 
 amusement. 
 
 " These objects now draw very near you, and you 
 have no time to lose in preparing yourself to meet 
 them. You will be in Parliament almost as soon 
 as your age will allow, and I believe you will have 
 a foreign department still sooner, and that will be 
 earlier than ever anybody had one." 
 
248 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 With one or two exceptions, which I will not 
 notice, I have endeavored to practice, and not 
 without some success, these Chesterfieldian pre- 
 cepts. In fact, it was in pursuance of their sug- 
 gestions that I was enabled to accomplish what 
 the President was pleased to commend in his last 
 Message, in behalf of American interests at the 
 Porte. It was because of this accomplishment- 
 thanks to Lord Chesterfield that I concluded to 
 return home, after diplomacy did not, and as my 
 new service does not, require so many and such 
 peculiar sacrifices to the graces. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 INFERNAL FIRE AND LALLA ROOKH DIPLOMACY 
 
 THE ROMANCE AND POETRY OF PETROLEUM. 
 
 I CAME to take an interest in the matters indi- 
 cated by the head of this chapter because my 
 official duty required me to examine into certain 
 petroleum frauds on our trade in the classic isle of 
 Mitylene. This interest was spurred by some 
 happy coincidences, partly literary and partly 
 .social. Thus it happened to " concatenate ac- 
 cordingly." 
 
 Twenty-six years ago I wandered into a store 
 near my law office in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was 
 kept by the Messrs. James. I opened an exquisite 
 edition of Thomas Moore's " Lalla Rookh." That 
 book, the dandyism of all literary Orientalism, was 
 en toilette in gold and ruby ruby predominant. 
 I read the dedication to Samuel Rogers. When 
 I opened the same volume, the other day, in 
 my library in Prinkipo, the " Pleasures of Mem- 
 ory " returned. I recalled, by a system of mne- 
 monics, my Cincinnati experience as a young 
 lawyer or, rather, as an inchoate lawyer, then 
 studying how Law limped after Justice in vain ; 
 
 249 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 for I am not aware that in the three decades 
 or more since, Law has overtaken her healthier 
 sister. Many a time since I have seen Law stum- 
 ble, just as she was about to join hands with Jus- 
 tice and assist the latter to bear the scales aloft. 
 
 Eheu ! Posthume ! How the years have glided 
 away since that morning of my life, when " Lalla 
 Rookh " was one of the sources of my inspiration, 
 and before petroleum had lighted my student's 
 lamp in this Eastern capital. 
 
 During one of the damp, foggy, gloomy days of 
 the past winter, a stranger from New York was 
 announced. I hastened to the reception room, 
 and while awaiting him I picked up, by way of 
 passing the time, that very volume of " Lalla 
 Rookh." It has followed the author around this 
 planet and gives much comfort by its sensuous 
 imagery and impearled ideas. But on this oc- 
 casion this beauteous work was all aglow with its 
 ruby and gold. It lay next to a terrific volume 
 called the " Region of Eternal Fire," dressed like 
 Mephisto himself, and sporting gold-leaf all over 
 its diabolic cover. It was Marvin's account of a 
 journey to the petroleum regions of the Caspian 
 in 1883. The book, its cover, and contents de- 
 served the sinister title. 
 
 But what has the Nourmahal to do with these 
 subterranean deviltries ? This much : That the 
 place in " Lalla Rookh " upon which I happened 
 
V 
 
 ARMENIA 
 
 , PERSIA 
 
 /** TEHERAN 
 
 THE REGION OF FIRE AND PETROLEUM. 
 
MOORE'S FIRE WORSHIPPERS. 2 $l 
 
 in my momentary vagary gives a description of 
 
 Ivan's outlawed men the worshippers of fire ! It 
 
 locates them near Yezd's eternal mansion of 
 caloric 
 
 " Where aged saints in dreams of heaven expire ; 
 From Baku, and those fountains of blue flame 
 That burn into the Caspian." 
 
 To this verse there is an annotation which in- 
 dicates the historic facts to which Marvin alludes 
 in his practical observations viz., that about 
 Baku, from early times, the sun and fire worship- 
 pers abided and that they kept illuminated the fires 
 with vestal vigilance for 3000 years on a sacred 
 mountain near Yezd, called Ater Quedah. He 
 was reckoned unfortunate who died away from 
 that mountain. Another note to Moore's verse 
 says : " When the weather is hazy on the Caspian 
 shore the springs of naphtha on an island near 
 Baku boil up higher, and the naphtha often takes 
 fire on the surface of the earth and runs in a 
 flame into the sea, to a distance almost incred- 
 ible." 
 
 This edition of " Lalla Rookh" was of 1849, and 
 the notes were by the author as early as 1817 ; so 
 that Baku, now so famous, and to Americans so 
 troublesome and interesting as a competitor, is 
 not a new place as a fiery resort or as a theme for 
 literary exercise. 
 
252 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 The odd coincidence of the proximity of these 
 volumes on my table, and the other fact that I 
 opened the poetic volume by chance upon the 
 verse and notes quoted, gave rise to a new marvel. 
 It was this : My visitor was an agent of the Amer- 
 ican Standard Oil Company ! He was en route to 
 Baku ! He was about to sound the depths, vol- 
 ume, and values of these remarkable wells ! This 
 visitor was the shrewdest man I met in the East. 
 He was looking after his business and the new 
 light of Asia with a watchful eye on Baku. He 
 intended to go there. He did go. He returned 
 and reported. He did not say much. He was 
 writing it all up for his employers. I propose to 
 do a little of this for my readers, since it combines 
 the utilities of light and life with the elegance of 
 poetry. 
 
 To do this I must draw upon Marvin's " Eter- 
 nal Fire." Marvin is not a slow, infrequent, or 
 unknown w r riter. He is voluminous. He was the 
 correspondent of the London Morning Post on 
 many a well fought journalistic field. He it was 
 who wrote the " Russians at Merv and Herat," 
 " The Russian Advance Toward India," " Merv, 
 the Queen of the World," " Reconnoitring Cen- 
 tral Asia," etc. He captured the Caspian, if ever 
 man did, by way of penetrating its physical and 
 political secrets. 
 
 Mr. Marvin's new Inferno is the result of 
 
BAKU ENTERPRISE IN OIL. 
 
 much research, for he has exhausted the literature 
 of petroleum as well as its physical phenomena. 
 That literature is by no means limited to " Lalla 
 Rookh." Names that give one the lockjaw to 
 pronounce, such as Gulishambamp, Markooriskopf, 
 Ogloblin, Mendeleiff, Gospodin, Polelika, and 
 others have given to the petroleum industry of 
 Baku and of Russia much chronicle and many 
 statistics. Yet Mr. Marvin's book seems to have 
 rather a tendency toward a high appraisement of 
 the Messrs. Nobel and their great genius for engi- 
 neering, and properties in oil. I could not rise 
 from its perusal without that impression. 
 
 The engravings in the book of the Nobel works 
 are interesting, but I should say that Nobel drew 
 something in favor of Marvin for them. But are 
 not these enterprising Swedi'sh men worthy of all 
 that is said and pictured ? The brothers Nobel 
 have dabbled in dynamite and triumphed in tor- 
 pedoes ; but their enterprise at Baku in laying 
 down the first pipe-line and by replacing barrels 
 with cistern steamers in fact, by organizing an 
 oil fleet and making communication over the shal- 
 lows of the Volga by tank-cars, with depots over 
 Russia, and soon to be extended elsewhere is a 
 romance worthy of celebration by pen and pencil, 
 a romance greater than that of which Tom Moore 
 sings. How the Nobel business is carried on, all 
 for cash, how the brothers have passed crises in 
 
2^4 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 the financial world, how they have harnessed the 
 Russian government to their petroleum-car, how 
 their business has become nearly a monopoly by 
 reason of their peculiar mechanical skill and ap- 
 pliances, is it not written by Marvin in a most fas- 
 cinating manner ? Whether you consider the ma- 
 terial wonder described by Major-General Gold- 
 sword in 1870, when he saw natural petroleum gas 
 fires which had been flaring more than 2 500 years ; 
 or whether igniting in the furnaces of a hundred 
 steamers on the Caspian and Volga ; or the enor- 
 mous subterranean reservoirs which science here 
 locates ; or the great ridge beneath the Caspian, 
 from shore to shore and beneath the Caucasus, 
 from sea to sea ; whether this useful element be 
 found beneath the barren steppes or under the 
 mountain chains, or whether it rises in columns 
 like the geysers of Iceland or the Yellowstone ; 
 whether, as at Findlay, Ohio, or at Allegheny 
 City, Pennsylvania, it is made to move machinery 
 and illuminate great workshops ; whether its 
 streams come forth in iridescent beauty the iris 
 out of whose black unfragrance comes the pig- 
 ments for the painting of my lady's robe or her 
 maid's frock ; whether it exudes from the sodden 
 soil or is used for watering the dusty streets of 
 Baku ; or whether it weaves by locomotion and 
 the swift-flying shuttle of interchange a new civil- 
 ization, it is at once a theme for the muse of 
 
THE PARSEES. 
 
 Moore and the speculations of the bourse. If it 
 be true, as is alleged, that a single man pricked 
 the earth near Baku and wasted 50,000,000 or 
 100,000,000 gallons of good oil enough to supply 
 and light London for years then poetry has lost 
 its license, and should turn over its office to a 
 tenth muse, which I christen the " Muse of 
 Mechanism," to sing in oily numbers these natural 
 glories and humanities of the earth. 
 
 Outside of the mercenary view of this burning 
 question, it may be stated that the Parsee still 
 lives ; but fuel to feed his sacred fire is now an 
 expensive item. Yet it must be supplied when- 
 ever a new temple is dedicated. Sixteen different 
 kinds of wood, in one thousand and one pieces of 
 fuel, are required to obtain the sacred flame. This 
 is afterwards fed with sandal-wood, and the cost 
 of the process averages $7500. There are still 
 three large and thirty-three small fire-temples at 
 Bombay ! They are by no means inexpensive. 
 
 The fire worshipper is no longer paramount in 
 Persia. Zoroaster no longer teaches his peculiar 
 doctrine. Nine-tenths of the Persians are Ma- 
 hometans. There has been a perpetual perse- 
 cution of those who remain faithful to the fiery 
 tenets of their forefathers. For twelve hundred 
 and fifty years the Guebres (the name from 
 which the Gaiour, or infidel, is taken) have sur- 
 vived. They pay their devotion to the life-giving 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 principle of the sun. They do not worship the sun. 
 They worship God, its creator ; the Being who 
 is supreme over fire and light. The Guebres are 
 an honest race. They are of the pure Persian 
 stock, when Persia was of some account in the 
 conduct and history of the world. Most of the 
 Parsees reside in India. Their homes are in 
 Bombay and in Calcutta. Out of the hundred 
 thousand who survive, only about seven thousand 
 are left in Persia. Their worship is singularly 
 beautiful, symbolical, and not at all unworthy of 
 the great demonstration which nature makes in 
 and around Baku. It is by no means unworthy 
 of the auroral splendors of the dawn when its most 
 prominent observances hail the coming day ! 
 That people which does not enjoy light and fails 
 to illumine, wherever and whenever nature makes 
 provision, are the laggards in the human race. 
 The fire worshippers love the light and their ways 
 are not evil ! 
 
 Sometimes these fountains of naphtha create a 
 volcano whose sudden outbursts quite swamp the 
 little buildings around. It is not a volcano of fire 
 so much as of hot mud. Some time ago there 
 was an explosion about ten miles from Baku, and 
 a column of fire shot up three hundred and fifty 
 feet high. The country was illuminated. The heat 
 was perceptible miles away. Little damage was 
 done, for there was no wind, The volume of 
 
KEROSENE AS A C2VILIZER. 257 
 
 muddy liquid thrown up was estimated in Russian, 
 which I cannot interpret, except by the vague 
 data that it spread itself over more than a square 
 mile, and to a depth of from seven to fourteen 
 feet! 
 
 David A. Wells, in his new book called " A 
 Study of Mexico," regards the kerosene lamp as 
 one of the motors of civilization in Mexico, only 
 next after the railroad. In urging the reciprocity 
 treaty with America he indicates how a bright, 
 new, little kerosene lamp became to him the most 
 remarkable and interesting object of importation 
 from the United States to that country. It was 
 to him " remarkable and interesting, because 
 neither the man nor his father, possibly since the 
 world to them began, had ever before known any- 
 thing better than a blazing brand as a method for 
 illumination at night, and had never had either 
 the knowledge, the desire, or the means of obtain- 
 ing anything superior. But at last," says Mr. 
 Wells, " through contact with and employment 
 on the American railroad, the desire, the op- 
 portunity, the means to purchase, and the knowl- 
 edge of the simple mechanism of the lamp, had 
 come to this humble, isolated Mexican peasant ; 
 and out of the germ of progress thus spontane- 
 ously, as it were, developed by the wayside, may 
 come influences more potent for civilization and 
 the elevation of humanity in Mexico than all that 
 17 
 
258 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 church and state have been able to effect within 
 the last three centuries." 
 
 The same may be said, with even more empha- 
 sis, about our petroleum interests in Turkey. The 
 petroleum can and lamp play a double purpose ; 
 the one as a tin bucket and the other as a vessel 
 for the fluid which gives so much comfort to 
 the dark places of the East. It supplies, in fact, 
 the lamp of Aladdin, from whose friction sprang 
 rare and wonderful opulence. 
 
 It is generally supposed that Job was a rich 
 man. Perhaps many of his boils and broils came 
 out of the fact that he was an opulent liver. Con- 
 sidering the land of Uz as we now find it, one 
 would suppose there w r as very little wealth in it. 
 We have not a very clear idea of it. Job must 
 have worked several gangs of slaves on fruitful 
 ground in the desert. He had some connection 
 with the petroleum industry of the Euphrates, 
 although it has never been thoroughly acknowl- 
 edged. Job acquired his large fortune from the 
 uncertain element of the petroleum wells. Some- 
 times they gave him abundance ; at other times, 
 like the wells around Pittsburgh, they gave him 
 nothing. There can be little doubt that when his 
 wells caught fire, it spread fire on the prairie, and 
 not only destroyed houses, and flocks, and children, 
 but reduced Job to a considerable amount of pro- 
 fanity and scalding sores. Whatever may be said, 
 
ASP HAL TUM MARE. 2 $Q 
 
 however, about this remarkable man, it is very 
 certain that before his time many years before 
 his time the Dead Sea, the Asphaltum Mare, 
 was the result of a vast eruption of which oil 
 was the principal ingredient. Its surface is below 
 other sea levels. The earth's crust must have 
 been rather thin there, so easily was it ruptured. 
 Otherwise the five cities of the plain might to-day 
 be rivals of Chicago or Birmingham. The Dead 
 Sea is very salty. In boring for petroleum saline 
 springs are often tapped. But for the tap in the 
 crust, when Lot fled from Sodom, Jordan might 
 not have been deflected from its course, and 
 Canaan might still have been a land for the 
 sacred lyric muse beyond all the music of the 
 Methodist or the rhapsodyof the Russian devotee. 
 There is no doubt that petroleum bubbles up to 
 the surface of the Dead Sea and that the sun's 
 rays solidify it. This is asphaltum the purest 
 bitumen. It is known in Egypt as the element by 
 which the mummies were made up for immor- 
 talization. Herodotus (I seldom quote him with- 
 out thinking of his title as " the father of liars ") 
 has made several remarks about petroleum. I 
 will not quote, for fear I may be challenged to 
 the proof. I turn to Plutarch, who had a sense 
 of veracity. He confirms Herodotus and we will 
 take Herodotus into our confidence for this 
 occasion only. Plutarch describes certain re- 
 
2 6o THE PRIKCES ISLES. 
 
 markable phenomena in which fire is an element. 
 In fact, the oil to which he calls attention was 
 burned in the ancient lamp. It was known 
 to the Romans as Sicilian oil. From Persia 
 to Italy, from Hafis to Horace, the lamp 
 which gave its sweetness to love and its glory to 
 the Augustine age was fed from the burning 
 spring of the Orient the same wonderful phe- 
 nomena of which Zoroaster was the prophet, and 
 the Parsees the devotees. 
 
 It is not my purpose to make a disquisition 
 upon petroleum. The genius of man is penetrat- 
 ing the crust of the earth in its every part ; and 
 from the shores of the Caspian to China and 
 Japan, from Formosa to the Punjab, aye even out 
 of the lost Atlantis, in the Bermudas, the Canadas 
 and Pennsylvania, this element of fire leaps to 
 the surface at the touch of the diviner's wand. 
 
 It is, however, to the United States that this 
 industry owes its highest refinement and per- 
 fection of distribution. The carrying of oil from 
 the springs to the refineries in pipes, over thou- 
 sands of miles and from hundreds of reservoirs ; 
 the genius by which through chemistry this oil 
 is purified ; the immense Standard Oil Company, 
 with its capital of twenty odd millions ; our ex- 
 ports, which from New York alone are over forty 
 millons of barrels, nearly all refined, call up an 
 image of prosperity in an olden trade. 
 
IS PE TROLE UM A SAFE MO TOR ? 2 6 1 
 
 One drawback to the use of petroleum has been 
 recently developed. It is very doubtful, judging 
 by the terrible explosion recently on the " Petri- 
 ana," one of the tank steamers, whether or not it is 
 possible to work the petroleum vessel. The crew 
 having taken naked lights into a tank-room which 
 had been somewhat strained in a gale, the gas was 
 fired. Great loss of life ensued, and the inference 
 is that if petroleum is ever used for fuel in loco- 
 motives and ships, there will be plenty of accidents 
 after this pattern. This trouble is likely to be ob- 
 viated. 
 
 Whether you consider this petroleum develop- 
 ment in the nebulous glimmer of ancient and 
 religious history, or in the blaze of modern science 
 applied to labor-saving machinery, is it not marvel- 
 lous ? Whether it make out of the Caspian a 
 grand commerce and revolutionize and perhaps 
 rescue people who have, like the Armenians, lost 
 their nationality and home, this marvel may 
 again be, as it was to ancient Greek and Roman 
 navigators, a Pharos arresting attention and giv-* 
 ing safety to the almost despairing barks of human 
 hope and happiness. Is it therefore wonderful 
 that the ancient world, seeking a religion with 
 mysterious rites, should find in this awful and 
 unknown element of eternal fire its sacred 
 symbol and worship ? The Greek had his Vul- 
 can, or Hephaestus ; but the Persian, with like 
 
2 62 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 aspiration, made fire not merely the emblem 
 of the divine intelligence, but of God himself ! 
 The Jews connected fire with Jehovah. The 
 burning bush revealed their God. A sacred flame 
 burned unceasingly in the temple. When, there- 
 fore, from the soil or from the fissures of the lime- 
 stone of Baku the gas issued, it became a light 
 through the labyrinths of devotion into the un- 
 seen world. 
 
 When Moses was a child, a thousand years be- 
 fore Christ, the disciples of Zoroaster made pil- 
 grimages to Baku. Its sacred soil was known to 
 the Saracens as early as A.D. 600. The Parsees 
 here worshipped until the conquering iconoclastic 
 Moslem, with his one ineffable, invisible Allah, 
 destroyed the temples of fire and the illusions of 
 the Magi. As late as the twelfth century pilgrim- 
 ages of the fire worshippers were permitted under 
 Persian conduct. Since that time we have ac- 
 counts of this strange fire, and its utilities in giv- 
 ing light, in slacking lime and in cooking victuals. 
 
 Petroleum is the " Seneca oil " of our own In- 
 dians. They used it for medical purposes. " The 
 Russians drink it," says a writer, ''as a cordial!" 
 What will not a Russian drink, regardless of odor 
 or vigor? It was good for "sore heads;" for 
 scorbutic pains, gout, and cramps. It was early 
 an article of commerce. It had its factories. But 
 never until lately, except perhaps in some of the 
 
PETROLEUM A FACTOR OF PROGRESS. 
 
 263 
 
 lost arts, has it been used as a motor of machinery 
 and a factor of progress. While it has flamed 
 about Baku, empires have risen, ripened, and rot- 
 ted. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 JAUNT TO THE PALACE OF BEYLERBEY ITS ASSOCI- 
 ATIONS, MENAGERIE AND TIGER RULES 
 
 FOR A TIGER-HUNT. 
 
 THERE is one portion of the Bosphorus on the 
 Asiatic side, known as Kandilli. The whole har- 
 bor of Constantinople is in full view from this 
 point. From time immemorial it has been called 
 the place "gifted with lanterns." Just below it, 
 is the modern Turkish village of Beylerbey. 
 From one village of Turkey and its quiet life you 
 may learn of all. Here are the houses and cot- 
 tages, the little mosque, the bay- trees, and the 
 cemetery. Yonder is the good Imaum, the Han- 
 oum to be respected, and the Pasha in all his dig- 
 nity. There is the country bumpkin at his 
 marriage, too bashful to venture through the 
 midst of the young girls of the village to fetch 
 away his bride according to the usual custom. 
 Sometimes, but rarely, you see a sottish son or 
 wild daughter who furnishes the topic of multitu- 
 dinous gossip for the many mothers-in-law. That 
 street Arab is eating simits the ring-shaped 
 bread with sesame seed upon its shining surface. 
 
 264 
 
A ROYAL PERSONAGE. 2 fa 
 
 Here, in short, are all the ups and downs of hum- 
 ble fortune ; but among them all is preserved the 
 beautiful Oriental custom of taking home to the 
 family the evening presents. 
 
 I have a special memory of Beylerbey, not so 
 much, indeed, of its charming environments, as of 
 a brief interview I once had there with a royal 
 personage. He was the last of an ancient line a 
 prisoner of state ; alas ! confined by the decree of 
 the Sultan within the appanage of the palace 
 demesne. What his offence or treason was I never 
 sought to know. It makes me sad to think of 
 him. It is not safe to become too familiar with 
 such victims of Oriental despotism. I saw him 
 but a few brief moments. I looked upon him ; 
 and for this indiscreet curiosity alone I yes I, 
 the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipoten- 
 tiary of the United States of America, came near 
 forfeiting my existence. I had to run for my life 
 to fly to my little launch, which was the only 
 vessel in the harbor bearing our ensign at that 
 time. Surely this ought to be a lesson to Con- 
 gress, in respect of our decrepit navy ! Diplo- 
 macy compelled me to pocket the indignity I suf- 
 fered. Disagreeable as this incident was, it had 
 its ludicrous aspect as the reader will see further 
 on. 
 
 Beylerbey was not always a place of confine- 
 ment for prisoners of state. In ancient days it 
 
266 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 was a favorite pleasure retreat of the Byzantine 
 emperors. It had then its famous Greek church, 
 Chrysoxeramos of the golden tiles. When the 
 Turks came they gave the place the name of 
 "Joy Unceasing." It long remained the chosen 
 residence of the Sultans, who preferred the Asiat- 
 ic to the other side of the Bosphorus for the sum- 
 mer season. It still retains much of its imperial 
 enchantments and entanglements, as I found out 
 on my first visit, but not with " unceasing joy." 
 
 Among the several palaces on the eastern side 
 of the Bosphorus are the palaces of Istavros, 
 Chengel, Keui, Kouleh, and Kandilli, but the pal- 
 ace of Beylerbey is the most beautiful and re- 
 nowned of them all. It was built by Mahmoud 
 II. for a summer residence. It rose like an ex- 
 halation to sweetest music. It was planned in a 
 dream, beneath the shadow of an Oriental moun- 
 tain, in an hour of golden luxuriousness and in- 
 dolence, and carried into execution during a fit 
 of elegant caprice. 
 
 When the beautiful Empress Eugenie visited 
 the Orient at the opening of the Suez canal, the 
 reigning Sultan, Abdul Aziz, went to many ex- 
 cesses of magnificent courtesy, including the dedi- 
 cation to her use of the Beylerbey palace. It was 
 then completely refurnished. The upholstery was 
 of velvet and satin. The decorations of the cham- 
 ber of the Empress were copied from those in the 
 
THE BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS. 
 
 Tuilleries. A magnificent caique, marvellous be- 
 yond the dreams of Cleopatra, was built ex- 
 pressly for Her Majesty. It had all the Oriental 
 appointments and rich carvings in gold, while 
 everything was ready to be served in European 
 or Asiatic fashion to gratify her womanly and 
 regal caprices. There were also special services, 
 thoroughly Turkish, with all their environments. 
 Upon the princely dining table there were rare 
 silver services, Broussa silk napkins, embroidered 
 with gold and silver, and golden dishes studded 
 with turquoises, and everything to give Oriental 
 taste and tone to the repast. The Sultanas act- 
 ually drank champagne to the Empress' health. 
 For the first time, these Mussulman ladies sipped 
 the liquor forbidden by Mahomet. It made the 
 young hilarious and the old happy. Singers and 
 dancers gave variety to the regal welcome. The 
 Empress learned to smoke cigarettes, perfumed 
 with Orient odors. She had near her two charm- 
 ing young women of the East, as interpreters and 
 companions. One of them was Nazli Hanoum, 
 a princess of Egypt, and grand-daughter of Me- 
 hemet Ali. Her life since these joyous scenes 
 has had its mournful experiences. One of these is 
 associated with the writer. It came innocently 
 enough from our courtesy to this fair Mahometan 
 Albanian at Prinkipo, which led to certain illegal 
 proceedings recorded in this volume. 
 
2 68 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 There is a kiosk, almost wholly of glass, at each 
 end of the sea-wall, which protects the palace 
 grounds of Beylerbey. The interior of each is 
 furnished with a broad divan in blue and straw- 
 colored satin. Behind the wall there are terraced 
 gardens rising in tiers, one above another, where 
 flowers and fountains abound. Upon the highest 
 point of the grounds are the ostrich gardens ; and 
 formerly there was a rare menagerie there. All 
 the animals are gone except the ostriches and a 
 lone tiger. I emphasize the tiger. Hereby hangs 
 my tale. 
 
 The palace is upon the lower terrace of the 
 garden, not far from the Bosphorus. It is a 
 building of three stories. It is of pure white 
 marble. It is ornate in style. It is not palatial 
 in extent, but it is a gem of Oriental architecture. 
 The broad vestibule leads into a grand central 
 chamber which is lighted from the roof. Here 
 is a staircase of unequalled beauty and superb 
 decoration. Marble columns support the galleries 
 of the floors above. Walls, floor and ceiling are of 
 marble. It the centre of the main hall is a grand 
 fountain, with innumerable jets shooting their 
 sheafs of silver with a murmurous music into the 
 quiet air. 
 
 From this central hall various rooms open. 
 Here the Grand Duke Nicholas, after the treaty 
 of San Stefano had relieved the city from Russian 
 
THE TIGER, IN ROYAL STATE. 
 
 269 
 
 occupation, held high court and carnival, following 
 the example of the Empress Eugenie. Here rat- 
 tled and clanked over the marble pavements the 
 spurs and sabres of the Russian officers. Here the 
 then young Sultan, Abdul Hamid, came to make his 
 courtesies to the Czar's representative. 
 
 But of more vital interest to me than all these 
 scenes of departed pomp and pageantry was the 
 last remaining animal of the Sultan Abdul Aziz's 
 menagerie. He was a royal Bengal tiger. I made 
 my homage to his royalty as he couched and pant- 
 ed in his confinement. " He was the sole relic of 
 old Priam's pride ! " 
 
 It is not unusual in the palaces around Con- 
 stantinople to illustrate the parks and gardens 
 with some very vivid pictures of natural history. 
 The Sultan has within his grounds at Yildiz 
 several aviaries of rare birds. He has a remarka- 
 ble collection of pigeons, and, along with a small, 
 but very select, menagerie, some 200 fine horses. 
 These horses are exercised in a riding school where 
 the Circassian guards sometimes exhibit their feats. 
 His Majesty is accustomed to shoot wild fowl, 
 which are decoyed to his little lakes within the 
 palace enclosure. And, like other and more ultra- 
 Oriental princes and emperors of the Tartar race, 
 he occasionally summons for his recreation a 
 sweet singer, or a conjuror, or a dwarf, or all -of 
 these together ; but in their midst a young tiger, 
 
270 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 whose antics are more terrifying than harmful, is 
 not unfrequently introduced for the gratification of 
 the company, or the delight of the harem. 
 
 In an excursion to the Bosphorus from our Isle 
 of Prinkipo I had the honor of gallanting, under 
 a special firman from the Sultan, a company of 
 some twenty-five ladies and gentlemen. They 
 were mostly of American nationality. After 
 observing the wonderful riches of the treasury at 
 Seraglio Point, with all its crowns, batons, arms, 
 scimitars, robes of state and royal jewellery, and 
 the usual touristic visit to Dolma Batche, the most 
 beautiful palace in the world, our launch bore us 
 across the Bosphorus to the palace of Beylerbey. 
 Sauntering through its sylvan shades we come to 
 the ostrich farm upon the lofty heights. They 
 may be tame birds, but they show considerable 
 fierceness when we observe them. No one ven- 
 tures in their midst. But what most attracts our 
 attention here is a cage, some forty by thirty feet, 
 in which is confined the royal tiger. He is the 
 prisoner to whom I have referred so touchingly. 
 No doubt he has many strange graces and accom- 
 plishments and, doubtless, some crimes to atone, 
 but I am not sufficiently ''close to His Highness" 
 to note his graces or vices. I keep a respectful 
 distance, for his cage looks old and shaky. Its 
 iron bars are suggestively slim. The tiger lies 
 in a crouching attitude with eyes ablaze, as if 
 
AN UNDIGNIFIED RE TREA T. 2 7 1 
 
 intent on gratifying some carnivorous propensity. 
 Some of the company playfully pitch pebbles at 
 him to arouse him. I do not. I stand in the 
 middle of the road. 
 
 He does not notice the rest of the company. 
 Evidently he desires to receive no one of less 
 rank than a Plenipotentiary. Horresco refer ens ! 
 In the twinkling of an eye, he springs, not at any 
 of the company, but at the Envoy! In fact, this 
 Oriental monarch would have the American Min- 
 ister one with himself. No doubt he intended 
 to do me a special honor, to take me into his 
 embraces to fall upon my neck and hug me. 
 But what would my democratic constituents think 
 of such a submission to an autocrat? This selfish 
 thought comes on me like a flash of light an in- 
 spiration. I turn my back hurriedly on royalty. 
 I throw diplomacy to the winds. I flee " the pre- 
 sence " with a celerity and certainty that were never 
 surpassed on the swiftest "star route" of the 
 plains. When the company assembles at the 
 palace below, to re-embark on the launch, I am 
 told, amidst much hilarious chaffing, that I had out- 
 stripped the swiftest flight of Mercury. But I 
 maintain that in spite of the succulent two hun- 
 dred and fifty pounds of our cavass, and other 
 weighty persons present, including some unctuous 
 females, the tiger showed a royal discrimination in 
 picking out a Minister Plenipotentiary for his prey. 
 
2/2 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 " Afraid ? " What ! an American afraid of a royal 
 personage? Never ! Besides I had no time for 
 fear. "Undignified retreat?" Let me amend. 
 It was not a " retreat." It was more like one of 
 General Joe Lane's field evolutions, of Kansas 
 fame. It was a swift countermarch in the face of 
 the enemy, executed in the most dashing style to 
 the rear ! 
 
 I once came upon two grizzlies in California; 
 they were in a cage. I never loved a fero- 
 cious animal outside of a cage or menagerie. I 
 have never seen any such in a state of nature, 
 except a supposititious hyena in upper Egypt 
 among the tombs, and a jackal between Jaffa 
 and Jerusalem. I met the latter by moonlight 
 alone, but I loved him not. It is not necessary 
 to see the tiger in his lair to appreciate his 
 moral qualities. I have talked with wild Kabyles 
 in Algiers, and with officers of the British 
 army from South Africa, and have heard them 
 detail their lion-hunting adventures. 
 
 One of the officers of the British Indian 
 army told me a story worth repeating. It was 
 about the famous Jaagt in the Island of Singa- 
 pore. He was a man-eater ; I mean the Jaagt. I 
 will let this son of Mars the officer relate his 
 adventure in his own grandiose style, and with all 
 its Brobdignagian proportions. He describes the 
 
THE FAMOUS MAN-EA TER. 
 
 tiger as running through the jungle away from 
 him. 
 
 " As soon as I saw " said the British officer, 
 " his eyes burning like coals of fire, I knew he 
 was the famous man-eater. He had a little child 
 in his fangs, and, upon my honor, was about to 
 leap over one of the pits, which are sometimes 
 dug in the jungles, and^bear it off to his fastness 
 among the rocks of the hills ! My first impulse 
 was to open fire on the brute with my sixteen-shot 
 revolving breech-loader rifle, but when I saw the 
 child, I hesitated." 
 
 Here I raise my hands in holy horror, and my 
 eyes express the utmost concern as the officer 
 resumes : 
 
 "I hesitate," said he, "but a short time. I 
 pick out a spot where the intermaxillary joins 
 the temporal bone. I fire. The child drops un- 
 harmed from the tiger's broken jaws ! It is one 
 of the best shots of my life ! 
 
 "This shot brings the ferocious animal to bay. 
 I see the great gouts of blood, dropping from 
 his jaws as he lashes his sides furiously with 
 his royal tail ! He crouches for a spring. Is he 
 not a royal specimen? His side shines in the 
 sun like satin striped with burnished gold. I am 
 almost dazzled with its brilliancy. I do not want 
 to spoil such a trophy. I aim for his eye. I send 
 a bullet into his brain, just as he makes his spring. 
 
 18 
 
274 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 He falls stone dead at my feet ! I restore the 
 child, a beautiful boy, to its distracted mother who 
 lives in a bungalow, near by. Upon my honor, 
 the sight of the lady's joy and gratitude over her 
 rescued child almost unmans me. She is the 
 wife of a huzzar officer. I order one of my 
 retinue to remove the hide from the slain animal. 
 I present it to her a few days afterwards for a rug. 
 I would not have taken a thousand pounds for it." 
 
 But this was not the end of the gallant officer's 
 tiger story. After a moment of suspicious silence 
 on our part, he said : 
 
 " Do you know, gentlemen, I have some- 
 times been slightly embarrassed at the suspicion 
 with which those unfamiliar with life in the 
 jungle receive our accounts of its adventures? 
 Now, mark the sequel. Twenty years after this 
 incident, I was in the smoking saloon of one of 
 the Peninsula and Oriental steamers, with a lot of 
 officers and civilians on their way out to India. 
 We were whiling away the evening, comparing 
 our hunting reminiscences. Among other exploits, 
 I recounted this adventure in Singapore. Just as 
 I finished it, a little ensign whom I had noticed 
 listening to the story with strange excitement of 
 manner, springs from his seat with uncontrollable 
 emotion. He runs to me. He throws himself into 
 my arms. He exclaims : 
 
 " ' General ! general ! I am that rescued child, 
 
EA RL Y PARTIALITY FOR FELINES. 
 
 275 
 
 and the lady is my mother ! She cherishes that 
 tiger robe as the chief of her choicest treasures ! 
 Oh ! my brave, brave, preserver ! Have I found 
 you at last ?' If you can credit it, there was not 
 a dry eye in the party." 
 
 I relate the brave officer's story, not alone for 
 its own interest, but in order that its moral shall 
 maintain the veracity of my own tiger tale. It is 
 with great reluctance that I tell it. I would not 
 be discredited. Still I have a suspicion that that 
 officer is a lineal descendant of Ananias and Sap- 
 phira; and that the young ensign displayed fine 
 histrionic talent. 
 
 Nearly every one in his callow youth has a par- 
 tiality for an animal. Some take to a horse, some 
 to a squirrel, some to a dog, some to a parrot and 
 some to a canary. My partiality was always for a 
 cat. There is something in the affectionate nature 
 of the cat, whose purring leads one unconsciously 
 and gradually on toward a tender regard for its 
 congener the tiger! In visiting the menagerie, I 
 always look first for the tiger's cage. Look into 
 any book upon vertebrated animals at the figure 
 of the tiger ! You will see it pictured as a model 
 of strength and grandeur. The ancients said that 
 the peacock was the most beautiful among birds 
 and the tiger among animals. Where is the ani- 
 mal of its size that can leap so easily as the tiger, 
 four times its own length ? It is said while its 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 physiognomy is far from fierce and, unlike the 
 lion, is of a placid and pleasing air, that no cor- 
 rection can terrify, and no indulgence tame it. 
 But it is erroneous to suppose that the tiger is un- 
 tamable. Why should not any feline be tamable ? 
 The cat is the most domestic of animals. Shake- 
 speare calls it the "harmless necessary cat." 
 Augustus, the Roman emperor, kept a tame tiger, 
 and Claudius had four of them at a time, as a 
 royal pleasure. This fact is verified by a beauti- 
 ful mosaic, discovered near the arch of Gallicius 
 in Rome. Kean, the tragedian, possessed a puma. 
 It is a fierce feline. It followed him about as 
 docile as a dog. Sarah Bernhardt has a young 
 cougar as her playmate ! I should prefer them 
 when quite young. 
 
 It was the custom of the early emperors in 
 Byzantium to have a tame tiger near them. The 
 fakirs of Hindostan have the secret of making 
 tigers as tractable as kittens. But after such kit- 
 tens come to the age of discretion, I w r ould not 
 play with them, if I were a fakir. As a general 
 rule, I would not advise either emperor or fakir 
 to be too familiar with the tiger. Like other 
 specimens of royalty, its favor is fickle. It has 
 the trick of its ancestry. Through caressing, it 
 may be tamed for a time, but very few people 
 either in or outside of India would go its security 
 to keep the peace. 
 
RO YAL TY AND SIZE OF THE TIGER. 2 77 
 
 In Asia the type of royalty is the tiger. In 
 ancient Rome, the symbol of empire was the 
 eagle. In France, it is a rooster. Is it not Emer- 
 son who says that these symbols of strength are 
 selected from the predatory kingdom ? It may not 
 be generally known, but it is true, that the beaver 
 was proposed in America as the emblem of our 
 hardworking, industrious and sagacious people ; 
 but the beaver was laughed out of our national 
 crest. In its place was substituted a bald-headed 
 robber. 
 
 Not being able to account for the tigerish pro- 
 pensity exhibited toward me at Beylerbey by 
 anything that I had ever done to the animal, for 
 I always defer to him, even in a menagerie, by 
 taking off my hat before his cage, at a respectful 
 distance, it at last occurred to me that I had 
 never sufficiently atoned for a bit of school-boy 
 composition. Its theme was " The Tiger." I 
 cannot fully recall its tenor, but it did not do 
 justice to the magnificent savagery and superlative 
 strength of his nature. I simply said that it was 
 an animal three feet high and eight feet long. 
 This was unjust. Had not Buffon seen one in 
 the East Indies, fifteen feet long? This, how- 
 ever, included the tail. " Allowing" says the 
 naturalist, " four feet for that, it must have been 
 eleven feet from the tip of the nose to the inser- 
 tion of the tail." Goldsmith saw one in the 
 
2 ;8 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 Tower nine feet long. I am now satisfied, from a 
 hasty glance in the cage at Beylerbey, that the 
 tiger is at least twenty-five feet long and seven- 
 teen feet high ! It is announced in books, that 
 he has a yellow hide, and an average of some 
 twenty-five very black stripes. I am now satisfied 
 that the hide is of a sanguinary red and that its 
 ebony stripes may be counted by the hundred. 
 In my composition I related how it was the object 
 of sportive expeditions in Bengal ; that the hunt- 
 ers go forth, armed with rifles, in a houdah, on the 
 backs of trained elephants to kill the tiger ; and 
 I have never since disassociated the elephant from 
 a tiger. The general opinion is, that the tiger 
 springs upon the elephant to reach the hunter. 
 I did not question its correctness in my speedy 
 movement down the hill of Beylerbey. My tiger 
 seemed to have elephantine proportions. As the 
 Irishman said of the elephant it had a tail at both 
 ends of the animal. My movement at that par- 
 ticular juncture outdid any latter-day toboggan 
 slide. It gave rise to an excess of specific levity, 
 from my companions ; but I gave to the retreat 
 all my specific gravity. It was accelerated by a 
 wild scream from the animal, more horrid than the 
 roar of the lion : tigrides indomitce, rugiuntque 
 leones. I had yielded to the indomitable. Is it 
 Byron, or some one else, who says : " There is a 
 pleasure in the pathless woods." I never enjoyed 
 
A LITERARY TIGER. 27Q 
 
 myself in palatial grounds so much as I did on my 
 retreat from the caged animal at Beylerbey ; for I 
 went down through the terraced groves regard- 
 less of paths. I did not retreat before an ordi- 
 nary, unrenowned beast. No ! I learn that this 
 is the identical tiger referred to in a volume by 
 Lieutenant Greene of the United States Army. 
 He saw it in 1878, after the Russian war. He 
 speaks of it as "a far-famed tiger of great beauty 
 and wonderful size." So that this hero of the jungle 
 is not unknown to literature. How often has he 
 avoided the poise of the spear in his native home ! 
 How often has he leaped upon the Jumbos of the 
 jungle ! Of this there is no record. It is said 
 that death and the gods are shod so softly that 
 their tread is silent. The paw of the tiger has 
 death beneath its velvet. But when I fled from 
 his paw I took courage from this comforting 
 verse about the Pale Horse and his rider: 
 
 " . poisoned with a kitten's claw, 
 
 The man escaped the tiger's jaw ! " 
 
 Tiger-hunting was always a favorite diversion 
 with me in books. I have read Captain Shake- 
 spear's "Wild Sports of India." I had followed 
 him upon the elephant. I became as brave as a 
 Shikarree up a tree, with a bullock below for a 
 bait, and a "man-eater" crouching in the thicket 
 
2gO T<HE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 but this was in a book ! I have swallowed 
 many of the swelling 1 tales of the Nimrods of the 
 British Indian army; and have blessed the intelli- 
 gent lungoor-baboon, which warns other animals 
 of the feline approach, by swinging with prehen- 
 sile grasp from tree to tree, uttering much Simian 
 profanity. 
 
 The roar of the tiger and the trumpeting of the 
 elephant give a resounding glory to the hunt of 
 the tiger. The more distant these notes of battle 
 to my ear, the better ! I was told in Northern 
 Africa, by a Gascon resident, that the lion killers 
 run little risk, as they take care to gorge the ani- 
 mal with a calf or so before attacking him. In 
 reading up the literature of the tiger, I am inclin- 
 ed, from my experience at Beylerbey, to make a 
 series of rules, nunc pro tune, for the governance 
 of the tiger hunt, seriatim thus : 
 
 RULE I. If the tiger be interrupted by the ap- 
 proach of any other animal, do not try to shoot at 
 the other beasts. How any hunter can coolly look 
 at a tiger, selecting the best place in his" body for 
 the bullet, is to me marvellous ; yet I have read of 
 hunters scanning his withers and girth, locating his 
 lung, liver and vertebrae, with as much sangfroid 
 as if the burning of his optic coals were not vital 
 with savagery. 
 
 RULE II. Scan, with heed, the anatomy of the 
 head, before going for the brain. 
 
RULES FOR TIGER HUNTING. 2 8l 
 
 RULE III. In the selection of a spot to which to 
 tie a heifer as bait, find a place near a lofty and 
 easily climbed tree. 
 
 RULE IV. Do not forget to grease the trunk of 
 the tree behind you as you climb up. 
 
 RULE V. Approach the tiger, if at all, when it 
 is sleeping. 
 
 RULE VI. If this be not profitable, carry a vial 
 of chloroform. This conquers the nervousness of 
 the animal, but it requires more nerve for its ap- 
 plication than some Nimrods possess. 
 
 RULE VII. If your elephant meet a tiger and, 
 being frightened, runs into a tree and upsets the 
 houdah, do not stop to rearrange the elephant. 
 Leave yourself for the nearest tree. Such a ti- 
 ger is not worth a scent. Let him go ! 
 
 RULE VIII. When you see a tiger in the gloam- 
 ing sharpening his claws against a forest tree, see 
 that your native aids go ahead to absorb his un- 
 divided attention. They are not expensive. 
 
 RULE IX. If you perceive the tiger to be dead, 
 do not be in a hurry about skinning him. He 
 has been known to punish, after death. I have 
 read well authenticated cases of tigers whose aorta 
 or cerebrum have been fatally shot ; but the tiger 
 easily overcomes the vis inertice. 
 
 RULE X. When you desire to sit on a damp 
 mound in an Indian jungle, to watch for tigers, 
 arm yourself with quinine balls. 
 
282 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 RULE XL When the tiger charges, as mine did 
 at Beylerbey, with his ears back and his body al- 
 most even with the ground, do not try to subdue 
 him with a piercing glance of your own masterful 
 eye. 
 
 RULE XII. If it be a tigress that charges, do 
 not rely too much on the gentleness of her sex. 
 She is not a cold blooded animal like the bear and 
 she warms to her bloody work. 
 
 RULE XIII. When you are advised by your 
 Shikarree that the tiger is lying in a wide open 
 space, where the grass is higher than your head, 
 do not go into the high grass. There is peril in 
 handling the gun under the circumstances. 
 
 RULE XIV. If your gun is a repeater, be sure 
 to carry more than one charge ; otherwise you 
 cannot be safely regarded as having a battery with 
 you for the assault which is necessary. 
 
 RULE XV. Be sure that your gun has proper 
 penetrating power ; for the tiger is a mass of 
 sinew, muscle and bone. 
 
 RULE XVI. Do not negotiate the tiger's skin 
 prematurely ; for you may discover before you 
 commence skinning that you have only tickled 
 his hide with a non-lethal weapon. 
 
 RULE XVII. In removing the tiger's skin, un- 
 der the belief that he is dead, better commence at 
 the tail, as many tigers have been known to re- 
 vive at the other end, under the operation. 
 
MORE RULES. 
 
 28 3 
 
 RULE XVIII. Do not attack the tiger without 
 a breech-loader ; for if you should in your nervous- 
 ness pour the powder in on top of the wad, you 
 might obscure your vision of the tiger, and he 
 would likely have an advantage, owing to his pe- 
 culiar eyesight, enhanced after the manner of bur- 
 glars, by prowling at night. In case of such ob- 
 scuration, wait until a wind arises to blow off the 
 smoke before renewing the attack. 
 
 RULE XIX. Do not cultivate a mercenary 
 spirit as the inspiration of a tiger-hunt. Although 
 the Indian Government may offer a large reward 
 for the skull of this ferocious beast, it is well to 
 cultivate a disinterested spirit. Give all your 
 mind to the sportive exhilaration. 
 
 RULE XX. It is well to have at least twenty 
 elephants in line before you charge on the jungle ; 
 otherwise, the contest may be unequal. 
 
 RULE XXI. When the tiger screams, it is well to 
 consider it as an intimation that he has prepared 
 his dinner and wishes to dine alone. 
 
 RULE XXII. If you are surrounded by a tiger 
 and a tigress and several cubs, and escape through 
 what the East Indians call the " swearing " of a 
 common monkey, remember to treat the monkey 
 thereafter with respect. Do not, in addressing 
 him, use the word " monkey." When you speak 
 of or to him, call him the Semnopithecus Entellus. 
 
 RULE XXIII. Inasmuch as the peacock is in- 
 
284 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 digenous to the forests of India where tigers most 
 do congregate, and is a rival of the tiger for beauty 
 of form and color, and besides is an ally of the 
 monkey in warning other animals, including man, 
 of the dangerous proximity of the enemy, speak 
 of the .peacock with respect. Praise its melodious 
 voice and dilate on its tail. Its vociferous 
 " hauk ! " " hauk ! " should not be repeated in vain. 
 It deserves recognition. These birds of Vanity 
 and Juno are friends of mankind. They deserve 
 recognition in a tiger country. 
 
 RULE XXIV. If a superannuated jackal, who 
 has been expelled from his pack, makes its famil- 
 iar yell, look out for the tiger! It is his lackey. 
 It feeds upon his leavings. 
 
 RULE XXV. When chasing the tiger, and find- 
 ing him in full retreat,, if he stops, as he some- 
 times will, to tear up the tufts of grass hilariously 
 to clean his nails, raise the banner of non-interven- 
 tion as an American gentleman, and quote Horace 
 ad unguem. 
 
 RULE XXVI. If you have enough elephants in 
 your retinue to carry some coal-oil tar, it would be 
 a matter of safety to agglutinate the tiger's eyes 
 and ears, for that operation has the same effect on 
 a tiger as tarring and feathering on an unhappy 
 human wretch, where Judge Lynch holds court. 
 
 RULE XXVII. If your company is noisy 
 enough with their cries, drums, cymbals and 
 
HA UNTED B Y TIGERS. 
 
 28 5 
 
 other clangorous music, retire from the hunt. You 
 may thereby soften, if not frighten, the ferocity 
 out of the tiger. 
 
 As a final suggestion. After you have him 
 thoroughly dead, singe his whiskers ! Otherwise 
 he will haunt you. I need not say that my ex- 
 perience at Beylerbey was of similar import. I 
 was, and am still, haunted by this animal. In my 
 dreams I picture him in every attitude crouching, 
 standing, and fighting with fang and claw, as a 
 royal animal whose only type in the human family 
 is found in such scourges as Genghis Khan, or 
 Timour, the Lame Tartar. 
 
 I return to Prinkipo after this jaunt more or 
 less timid about animals, especially the " felinae." 
 This timidity is increased by an adventure with 
 a watch-dog in our villa. He has returned and 
 finds us as new occupants. As a good dog he 
 resents our tenancy. He bites the tenant. 
 
 Our front gate is not latched. It is pushed 
 gently open and a dog bounds in. I am in the 
 arbor with my wife. The gardener rushes in to 
 catch the dog. But the dog has only come to his old 
 home. He is likely cross by reason of his exile. 
 We had stipulated that he should be taken away 
 from the villa. The cook and the maid said he 
 would not bite. They gave him something to eat 
 while we collected around him. The cook said : 
 
 " Why don't you caress him, and he will soon 
 know you." 
 
286 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 I venture to do so. In a moment he snaps 
 savagely, but happily the stiff shirt wristbands 
 and doubled up sleeve of my woollen undershirt 
 take the grip of the teeth. Only a slight scratch 
 appears on the wrist, without breaking the skin. 
 The indentation of the teeth is exquisitely shown 
 on the stiff wristband. He is no apprentice in 
 the art of printing this dog. 
 
 I resort to the library for consolation. I peruse 
 Buff on, Jardine and Goldsmith. At last I find 
 consolation in Aristophanes who, in speaking of 
 another wild beast, advises in his comic vein 
 to have nothing to do with such creatures ; and 
 especially, to "let the tigress suckle her own 
 whelps." 
 
 As a sportsman, in the literature of tiger-hunt- 
 ing, I close this chapter with a regrettable an- 
 nouncement. The famous Parsee tiger slayer, 
 Hormusjee Eduljee Kotewal, has just died in a 
 Bombay hospital from the effects of "a mauling 
 by a cheetah." Ah ! had he been a good Parsee ; 
 had he carried with him a bottle of naphtha from 
 Baku, or a jug of coal tar from Oil City, how 
 easily he could have subdued the cheetah ! The 
 Bhandsa State would not now be in tears over the 
 death of its brave forest inspector. He died game. 
 His record is high. He shot, during life, a hun- 
 dred tigers. Peace to all their ashes ! 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 ACROSS THE CHANNEL OF PRINKIPO HANNIBAL AND 
 
 HIS GRAVE. 
 
 SOMETIMES I add a volume to my repertory, 
 fresh from the mint of London or Paris, which 
 is * perused under conditions of indolence and 
 seclusion. One of these volumes, which held me 
 by its fascination and glitter of style, its wealth of 
 research and strangeness of learning was Flaubert's 
 " Salambo." It opens the mystic chambers of 
 Phoenician life. It gives new glimpses of the 
 Commercial Republic in her pristine days. It 
 presents the strange religious rites of Asia and 
 Africa in their wildest orgies. It displays Car- 
 thage when she was the rival of Rome, in an 
 aspect to make others weep with Marius over her 
 ruins. The volume is very realistic, especially 
 when read in sight of those Bithynian shores 
 where the merchant princes of Carthage once 
 traded, and where their conquering triremes often 
 swept through the waters of the Propontis. 
 
 " Salambo " is the bewitched and beauteous 
 daughter of the great Hamilcar. Her counterpart 
 one may see at the Greek church or at the scala 
 
 287 
 
288 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 every day here at Prinkipo. I confess to a dis- 
 appointment in the volume, however, for the hero 
 of my youthful enthusiasm, Hannibal, the .famous 
 son of HamilcaF Barca, is barely mentioned. 
 True, he was but a youth when the stirring scenes 
 of the war with the mercenaries, of which the 
 book treats, was in progress. Still the intrepid 
 boy is sufficiently outlined for the reader to see 
 him as " father to the man." 
 
 Hamilcar was often put to straits to save Hanni- 
 bal from the demands of the priests of Moloch. 
 They sought their human victims among the sons 
 of the eminent. The learned novelist makes the 
 teacher and guardian of the boy come from that 
 mysterious shore which is peopled with turtles, 
 which sleep under the palms on the dunes. The 
 faithful Iddibal enters the presence of the anxious 
 father to render an account of his stewardship over 
 the boy. " No one yet suspects ? " The old guar- 
 dian swears that the mystery has been kept. " I 
 teach him to' hurl the javelin and to drive a team." 
 " He is strong is he not ? " asks the proud and 
 anxious father. "Yes, Master, and intrepid as 
 well ! He has no fear of serpents, thunder or 
 phantoms. He runs bare-footed like a herdsman 
 along the brink of lofty precipices. He invents 
 snares for wild beasts. In the last moon he sur- 
 prised an eagle. The animal, in its fury, en- 
 wrapped him in the beating of its wings ; he 
 
YOUNG HANNIBAL. 
 
 strained it against his breast ; and as it died, his 
 laughter increased." 
 
 Hamilcar bent his head, well pleased at these 
 presages of his son's greatness! "But" resumed 
 the teacher, "the boy has been for some time 
 restless and disturbed. He gazes at the sails 
 passing far out at sea. He is often melancholy. 
 He rejects food. He inquires too much about 
 the gods ; and he wishes to become acquainted 
 with Carthage. How is he to be restrained ? I 
 have to make him promises. I now come to Car- 
 thage to buy him a dagger with a silver handle set 
 'in pearls." 
 
 This is one glimpse at the boyhood of the Car- 
 thaginian hero, who made " Rome howl " in the 
 might of his glorious manhood. What a career 
 was his ! And how tragic in its ending, like that 
 of all the great conquerors Alexander, Caesar, 
 Napoleon ! He became a prisoner on yonder 
 shore of Bithynia. It is just across the channel of 
 Prinkipo. There, it is said, in the so-called castle 
 of Hannibal, he took poison and died. 
 
 There is a romance about Hannibal which had 
 strange attraction for me when I was a child. I 
 felt a pity for the little boy when his father, just 
 before journeying with him to Spain and when he 
 was only nine years of age, dedicated him at the 
 altar to an eternal Nemesis against Rome ! I at- 
 tached myself to his fortunes and gloried in his tri- 
 19 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 umphs. How he subdued the Spanish princes ; 
 how he aroused the Roman senators by his suc- 
 cesses ; how, after protecting Africa and Spain, he 
 moved on to Italy ; how he crossed the Pyrenees 
 with half a hundred thousand footmen and n,ooo 
 horses ; how he deceived Scipio, and how he crossed 
 the Alps into the valley of the Dora Balteau, 
 each incident is a romantic chapter with a lofty 
 climax, which must always allure the fancy of the 
 young and amaze the mind of the old. At Cannae 
 he played havoc by destroying 70,000 men. Italy, 
 almost Rome herself, succumbed to him. 
 
 The immense sacrifices and movements of these 
 ancient rivals so disturb the even flow of history, 
 that we almost forget Philip of Macedon and his son. 
 The brother of Hannibal joined him in Italy, on the 
 banks of the Metaurus, where his army was worsted 
 and the brother was killed. Then Hannibal was 
 on the defensive. Never in the annals of mankind 
 was there such a long campaign as he made in a 
 hostile country, without assistance from home. 
 When Hannibal withdrew from Italy he was met 
 and beaten by Scipio, and thus ended the second 
 Punic war. Then Scipio began those services by 
 which he attained the civic crown. These events 
 happened more than 200 years before Christ. It 
 is 2069 years since that tomb across the Prinkipo 
 channel received the remains of this wonderful 
 soldier. Rome had demanded the punishment of 
 
BITHYNIA AS AN ASYLUM. 2 Ql 
 
 Hannibal as a disturber of the public peace. He 
 set sail for the land of his Phoenician ancestors. 
 He landed at Tyre. After some adventures at 
 or near Ephesus, he sought these shores, made 
 memorable by the siege of Troy, and since the 
 scene of many contests of priest and king, caliph 
 and emperor. He was received at the court of 
 the king of Bithynia, whose realm extended from 
 the Euxine and Propontis, on the north and west, 
 eastward, and including those places now famous 
 for their ecclesiastical history Nicomedia and 
 Nicaea. Its people were Greek colonists. Their 
 descendants to-day are Greeks. The inland, as 
 we see it from Prinkipo, is mountainous. It was 
 then, and is yet, wooded. Near the sea there are 
 fertile plains, which 2000 years ago were in a high 
 state of cultivation, with villages sprinkled over 
 its plains and slopes. Along its shore, toward 
 Ismid, there is a railroad whose rumble invades the 
 ear as I write. It is an unaccustomed sound 
 in the Orient. It is tempered by the moaning 
 of the wind through the pine trees of Prinkipo. 
 
 It was in this land of Bithynia that Hannibal at 
 last found asylum. A Roman embassy went to 
 the king and demanded him. For fear of falling 
 into the hands of his enemy, to whose destruction 
 he had been dedicated fifty-six years before, he 
 destroys himself. This event happens at Nico- 
 media, then the capital of Bithynia, and now 
 
2^2 TKE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 known as Ismid. It is at the eastern end of the 
 gulf of that name, to which, every day, I see the 
 Turkish postal steamer voyaging, with its solitary 
 white plume of vapor floating over the sea be- 
 tween the snowy range of Olympus and the 
 wooded heights of our enchanted isle. 
 
 This son of Hamilcar Barca, the Thunder- 
 bolt, almost fulfilled his destiny. He only failed 
 to make Carthage the mistress of the world vice 
 Rome conquered. He reduced Rome to a dire 
 emergency. Hasdrubal, his brother, rolled down 
 the Alps with an army that gathered like an 
 avalanche as he moved into Lombardy. What 
 with his elephants and troops, with which he had 
 left Gaul, he drew tribe after tribe of the cis-Alpine 
 Celts to his standards. But the Roman senate 
 had not then degenerated. Rome had a consul, 
 Nero. He was the man for the crisis. He was 
 associated with old Livius, as tough and obsti- 
 nate an old Roman as ever led on a legion or rode 
 in a triumphal chariot. Of stores, money and men 
 Rome had been drained. Cannae was still remem- 
 bered. But a senate which had voted a triumph 
 to its defeated soldiers, and never despaired of the 
 republic, was not to be disturbed by panic. 
 Although Hannibal was in the south and his 
 brother in the north, or, in the language of that 
 time, although two Hannibals were in the field 
 and striving by all the arts and devices of skill and 
 
THE SONS OF THUNDER. 
 
 strategy to draw toward each other, and thus to 
 destroy Rome and carry out with strenuous feroc- 
 ity the vow made by their father, still Rome did 
 not despair. After much pressing the Roman 
 consuls outwitted the "sons of Thunder." It was 
 the consuls who united. It was the double Han- 
 nibal who was separated. 
 
 What an assemblage was that army of Hasdru 
 bal ! The known world had been ransacked for 
 its hordes. Here were Iberian Celts in white 
 houmous; their brother Gauls, half naked, rank 
 with savage Ligurians ; mountaineers of the mari- 
 time Alps from Genoa and its vicinity ; Nasamones 
 from the region of Morocco ; spearmen from the 
 Nile and Lotophagi, who lived upon a fruit that 
 cured home-sickness. These flank the Cartha- 
 ginians " in cubic phalanx firm advancing " in the 
 centre. Numidian horsemen from the tribes of the 
 desert swarm on the wings, upon unsaddled 
 steeds. The van of the army is made up of 
 Balearic slingers from Minorca and Majorca, 
 whose art I have noticed among the Kabyles of 
 Algiers. The artillery is in the line of colossal ele- 
 phants, guided by Ethiopians. It makes a living 
 pachydermatous wall of defence. With javelin, 
 sword and spear, the soldiers march ; with mallet 
 and spike the elephant-drivers ride, ready to kill 
 the beast when it becomes unmanageable ! 
 
 For the Roman array read Gibbon's first chapter. 
 
294 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 In divisions of 1 200, with breast-plated and helmeted 
 ranks they meet the enemy. Their red crests shine 
 like fire in the light of battle. Their javelins are 
 light and are easily borne, with the short-sword 
 for thrusting and cutting. In quiescent order the 
 stern legions form. Every soldier is a single com- 
 batant. Each horseman is a skirmisher. Nero 
 commands the right wing, Livius the left, and 
 Porcius, the praetor, the centre. 
 
 History records this great test of Roman valor 
 by recounting the defeat and death of Hasdrubal. 
 The head of the defeated general is carried as a 
 trophy upon the hurried march of the Roman 
 army. It is thrown into the camp of Hannibal, 
 who then looks upon his brother's face for the 
 first time in eleven years. Horace pictures the 
 scene in his verse, and Livy tells of the delir- 
 ium of Rome over the result. The senate is 
 in perpetual session. The temples are filled 
 with worshippers. Thanksgiving is proclaimed. 
 Pleasure and business revive. Hannibal remains 
 in the land, but his power is broken. The battle 
 gives Rome two centuries of triumphs. Hannibal 
 still holds Southern Italy, but Rome "has con- 
 quered. Carthago delenda est. Still it is this 
 Hannibal our neighbor of Bithynia who was the 
 first in a period of 619 years, according to Gib- 
 bon, who had violated the seat of Roman empire 
 by his presence as a foreign enemy. 
 
ME TAURUS A PIVOTAL BATTLE. 2 
 
 I have mentioned, in the preceding chapter, a 
 volume by Sir Edward Creasy. It is entitled the 
 " Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World from Mar- 
 athon to Waterloo." He makes the battle of 
 Metaurus one of these pivotal battles, because 
 upon it hinged the supreme power, either of 
 Rome or Carthage. The historian likens the 
 issue to that of Waterloo. Napoleon was only a 
 later Hannibal. One fought seventeen years 
 against Rome, the other sixteen against England. 
 The historian carries the parallel even to Scipio 
 and Wellington. When Hasdrubal fell at the 
 Metaurus the fate of the world and that of Han- 
 nibal also was sealed. It was not a struggle 
 between two cities or empires, but between the 
 commercial spirit of Africa and the civilizing laws 
 of Rome. It was a contest between the Indo- 
 Germanic and the Semitic family of nations ; be- 
 tween art and culture on one hand, and indus- 
 try and adventure on the other. Everywhere on 
 the historic sea which surrounds us the struggle 
 was witnessed. Here the Phoenician contended 
 with the Greek two thousand years ago. To-day 
 the congener of the Phoenician, the Arab, contests 
 with the West. Rome annihilated Carthage; 
 will the Turk remain when pressed by the same 
 potential West ? 
 
 What remains of Carthage? The periplus of 
 Hanno, from which Flaubert constructs his won- 
 
296 
 
 THE PRIXCES ISLES. 
 
 derful novel ; a few coins ; some verses in Plautus ; 
 some remnants in the Franco- Phoenician peninsula, 
 and the fourth ode of Horace ! 
 
 " Quid debeas Roma, Neronibus 
 Testis Metaurum flumen et Hasdrubal 
 Devictus. " 
 
 So apocryphal is its history that Byron was 
 compelled to rescue from the oblivious pen of the 
 "Blind Muse" the name of that consul, Nero, 
 who made the unequalled march which deceived 
 Hannibal and defeated Hasdrubal. To this vic- 
 tory of Nero it might be owing that his imperial 
 namesake reigned at all. But the infamy of the 
 one has eclipsed the glory of the other. " When 
 the name of Nero is heard, who thinks of the con- 
 sul?" 
 
 So I may say, looking across the Prinkipo chan- 
 nel, within a few miles of the rolling plains of 
 Bithynia : 
 
 Who, in looking into the eternal Oriental 
 imbroglio, would dream that 2000 years ago at 
 Metaurus, or perhaps at Zama, the conflict was 
 begun, and temporarily ended, between the Indo- 
 Arabic-Asiatic-Oriental races and that other ele- 
 mental force which we now call " the West " ; and 
 that the dust of the Carthaginian hero who once 
 held Rome in awe reposes in yonder little dead 
 kingdom ? Arnold says, " The victory over Han- 
 
ENTERPRISES OF CARTHAGE. 2 - 
 
 nibal at Zama made it possible for the isolated 
 city of Carthage, thirty years later, to receive and 
 to consolidate the civilization of Greece, or by its 
 laws and institutions to bind together barbarians 
 of every race and language into an organized em- 
 pire, and prepare them for becoming, when that 
 empire was dissolved, the free members of the 
 commonwealth of Christian Europe." 
 
 Who now dreams that the leader of that Punic 
 host was the precursor in time and counting 
 the aeons, how brief the time of that adven- 
 ture which, without the mariners' compass or 
 steam, followed the African coast far beyond 
 Sierra Leone, " doubled the Cape," and ex- 
 plored the coast of Norway and the islands of 
 Albioni and Hiberni ! Phoenician navigators an- 
 ticipated the Congo and other enterprizes into Cen- 
 tral Africa. Their fleets made a great trade with 
 the tribes of the terra incognita. Carthage, when 
 beaten by Greece in commerce upon these shores 
 the ^Egean, the Pontus, Hellespont and Propon- 
 tis made her commercial career on the Western 
 Mediterranean. She had great men like Hamilcar 
 and his great sons ; but her fall was signal and 
 calamitous. She was too much commercial and 
 not so warlike as she seemed. Her factions rav- 
 aged her before she was ruined by Rome. She 
 depended too much on hirelings. The rich mer- 
 chant the " ancients," as Flaubert describes them 
 
298 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 fought by a substitute from Minorca, Greece, 
 Gaul or Numidia. There was a tariff on life. Her 
 mercenaries, like the Hessians hired by George III. 
 to fight against America in 1776-7-8 were brave 
 enough, but they did not fight like the sons of the 
 soil, contending for national life or personal ambi- 
 tion. Zama was the end of Carthage. There she 
 yielded her sceptre. 
 
 The story of Hannibal after he was beaten at 
 Zama by the Romans loses none of its romance 
 by the lapse of two thousand years. He first 
 sought refuge at the court of King Antiochus, in 
 Syria. Afterwards he went to the court of King 
 Perseus, of Bithynia. Here he was betrayed by 
 one of the legates whom Perseus had sent to 
 Rome. Then he was tracked to the house which 
 Perseus had given him. There he had lived a 
 lonely life, with only one servant. When the ser- 
 vant informed the old soldier that all chance of 
 retreat was blocked by more than the usual num- 
 ber of soldiers around his house, he gave up all 
 hope of escape, took the poison which he carried 
 with him, and at the age of seventy, in the year 
 183 B.C., this, the most remarkable man of an- 
 tiquity, next to Alexander and Caesar, died. 
 
 When I learned that the grave of Hannibal was 
 very near our vicinity, I happened to mention it 
 in a letter to America. Thereupon the indepen- 
 dent and not too reverent press of my country 
 
MOURNING AT HANNIBAL'S GRAVE. 2 QO 
 
 made every sort of picture of the great Carthagin- 
 ian. Some delineated him as the great elephant 
 of that name in Barnum's show. One pen-artist 
 went so far as to picture him as the same elephant, 
 pushing his way over the Alps, with trunk, trap- 
 pings and all the impediments attached ! Such 
 mistakes are liable to occur in the hurry of the 
 American press. It was a natural mistake. It 
 gave me some sadness. From the numerous 
 wood-cuts which illustrated the newspaper ac- 
 counts of Hannibal's Bithynian grave, I am tempt- 
 ed to reproduce an etching as a good specimen 
 of American art in its compact imagination as 
 evolved for that occasion. As the reader will see, 
 the artist lest his exaggeration should seem to 
 be conceived in too humble a way to suit an Ori- 
 ental theme gives his pen boldly to the portrait- 
 ure, so as to carry conviction of the truth of his 
 story. He circumstantially depicts the American 
 minister as a visitor at the grave of this departed 
 hero! Doubtless his inspiration is drawn from 
 Mark Twain's inconsolable sympathy at the grave 
 of Adam in Jerusalem. 
 
 Not the least of my enjoyments sub silcntio 
 at Prinkipo is the perusal of letters from old con- 
 stituents. Some have taken me for a minister of 
 the gospel, commended me for my change of life, 
 and given me sedate advice. Some have asked 
 impossible things that I should request of the 
 
7"HE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 government of Turkey. I wrote to a friend about 
 my location of the grave of Hannibal. I 
 thought it would interest him as he had once been 
 consul to Tunis, which included old Carthage in 
 its jurisdiction. I received a most sympathetic 
 reply. He greatly appreciated my kindness. He 
 asked me to drop a tear for him over the grave of 
 the Carthaginian hero ; to invoke his manes, and 
 whisper gently at his tomb that he, the late con- 
 sul not of Rome but America had lived long on 
 the soil of Carthage, and, like Marius at Utica, had 
 sat down upon the ruins of Bursa to contemplate 
 the scene of Carthaginian greatness. He con- 
 cluded by hoping that I would make a libation on 
 the grave to the repose of the ghost of Hannibal. 
 But the most jocose account of my discovery 
 was written by a valued friend, a Chicago editor. 
 He of course heard that I had discovered the 
 grave of his favorite hero. He determined 
 not to be out-done in describing the scene. 
 Concluding a long account, he pictures the 
 minister standing over the grave of the hero, 
 his lachrymal duct dripping with sympathetic 
 tears, which plash on a marble tombstone in- 
 scribed: " HANNIBAL, B.C. Anno 186. Requiescat 
 in pace ! " Among many touching episodes he im- 
 provises the following: "The minister's wife was 
 not so much overcome by emotion as he was. 
 'Why,' said she, Most thou weep for Hannibal? 
 
LACHRYMAL DUCT FLOWING. 
 
 3 OI 
 
 Pray dam oh ! dam thy tears ! Has he not 
 been dead two thousand years ? After such a 
 long absence will you not soon meet him in a 
 brighter and a better world ?" The minister, let 
 it be here recorded, was in no hurry to meet his 
 departed friend in the brighter and better world. 
 The editor's account of the scene is so realistic 
 and pathetic that it almost makes me weep for 
 the credulity of human nature. 
 
 HANNIBAL'S GRAVE. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 ASIAN SHORES NIOEA AND NICOMEDIA. 
 
 THE country along the Asian shore is not less 
 celebrated for its fertility than for the comfort it 
 gave to the early Greeks. It was from the remot- 
 est times thickly studded with cities and towns, 
 with their teeming multitude of people. It is 
 still populous and prosperous. What land can 
 vie with it in interest ? Its mountain peaks 
 were once the abodes of the gods. Its ranges 
 still form the natural boundaries of grand prov- 
 inces, and shelter fruitful Piedmontese valleys 
 in their warm embrace. To the classic fancy they 
 are crowned with rich foliage above terraced 
 slopes like Judea of old and blooming under rare 
 cultivation. The terraces remain ; but the bare 
 peaks point forestless to the passing clouds in silent 
 protest against the waste of past generations and 
 the indolence of the present. What land has 
 scenes of more romance, or names more familiar to 
 the reader of biblical and secular history ! Its 
 nomenclature, even after thousands of years, woos 
 the archaeologist and artist to their work, and 
 
 302 
 
SCENERY OF ASIA MINOR. 303 
 
 revives in the mind of the tourist lofty themes of 
 the ancient days when the hosts of Troy and 
 Greece were embattled on these plains. 
 
 It is a pleasant jaunt in the launch across the 
 channel to Kartal, where there is an old aban- 
 doned silk factory, owned by one of our neighbors 
 on the island, who is a Swiss. The large hall 
 with its clean, white, stone flooring is there. Fifty 
 silk-stands are there, but they are silent. They 
 speak the sad tale of an elegant industry aban- 
 doned. The water gave out, and therefore the 
 industry failed. Around the establishment the fig- 
 trees are hardy, for they care little for water. 
 But the earth is parched, and the fruit thereof 
 is pinched and poor. It is not of present en- 
 terprises I would speak now and here. The past 
 dominates. 
 
 This part of Asia Minor, into which I am accus- 
 tomed to look almost every morning from the 
 Isle of Prinkipo, is known as Anatolia. It is a 
 peninsula, a vast plateau, falling by stages down 
 to the three seas. It is a spur of the great plateau 
 of Central Asia. Its climate is balmy and trop- 
 ical. It was the seat of empire. Its very position 
 is so admirable that it influenced immensely the 
 early civilizations which here contended. 
 
 The great cities are gone. There are few mon- 
 uments of former grandeur, and scarcely any 
 roads leading into the mainland. Of commerce 
 
304 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 there is almost none left. Industry and patience 
 still bring something out of its soil ; enough for 
 its inhabitants, but dissolution seems to mark 
 large portions for its own. In the western por- 
 tion and in the vicinity of the seas the land is 
 arable and populous. The eastern portion is a 
 pasture ground for the Turkomans. It has a 
 splendid history in connection with the Christian 
 and other faiths. Its population, once twenty-five 
 millions, now hardly exceeds seven millions, of 
 which two millions only are Christian. 
 
 There are two classes of Moslems here : those 
 who wander about, and those who are settled. 
 The settled tribes are descendants of the con- 
 querors, the Seljukian Turks. The Seljukian 
 is always spoken of with respect, for he has pre- 
 served his ancestral virtues, dignity, courage, 
 loyalty and religious fervor. The Moslem in 
 Asia Minor looks upon Turkey in Europe only 
 as an encampment. At Broussa, Koniah and 
 other celebrated places in Asia Minor, is to 
 be found the true centre of the Mahometan em- 
 pire. Whatever may be thought of its political 
 or economical situation, the travellers whom I am 
 accustomed to meet, and who return from their 
 excursions into this wonderful land, bring back 
 stories overrunning with enthusiasm. They praise 
 the beauty of its scenery, the grandeur of its 
 mountains, the richness of its lands, the magni- 
 
TAMERLANE, THE TARTAR. 305 
 
 tude of its forests, its rain-falls so copious, and its 
 rivers so large ; and above all its ancient monu- 
 ments and its strange village life heightened by the 
 unstinted hospitality of its people. Here in this 
 region is found the Valonia oak, one of the princi- 
 pal trees in Asia Minor. It not only produces an 
 acorn whose husk is used in tanning and which is 
 exported in considerable quantities, and produces 
 quite a revenue, but it gives to the landscape 
 many graces and beauties, of which the tourist is 
 not unobservant. 
 
 The Turks had accumulated enormous wealth at 
 their old capital of Broussa, in Asia Minor, before 
 Constantinople fell beneath the prowess of their 
 scimitar. When Tamerlane, the Tartar, struck the 
 Turkish power on the plains of Angora and made 
 the great Sultan, Bajazet, his prisoner, he found 
 such a quantity of treasure that the coins and pre- 
 cious stones were weighed by the oka, which, as 
 stated in a former chapter, is a Turkish measure 
 of nearly three pounds. We must remember, how- 
 ever, that this is merely tradition, and that every- 
 thing told of this extraordinary Tartar must be 
 received with some grains of allowance. Doubt- 
 less he shed more blood and made more trouble 
 upon the face of the earth during his thirty-six 
 years of reign than any other personage of his- 
 tory. The Alexanders, Hannibals, Caesars, At- 
 tillas, Charlemagnes and Napoleons, were harm- 
 
 20 
 
3 o6 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 less as babes compared with this stalwart con- 
 queror and sanguinary scourge of the human 
 family. 
 
 How much of interest there is associated with 
 the history of Asia Minor! It might be called the 
 cradle and the grave of our race. Its very form 
 makes it a theatre of contention. Here are two 
 continents near to each other. Asia defiantly 
 thrusts her foot between two seas, and Asia 
 Minor becomes a battle ground where the tribes, 
 even of far-off plateaus of the continent, march 
 and countermarch to the conquest of the West. 
 Across these now placid waters Assyria and Per- 
 sia empty their hordes. Here Darius leads, over 
 his bridge of boats across the Bosphorus, seven 
 hundred thousand soldiers into Europe. His son 
 moves out of Persia into Cappadocia, which is at 
 the eastern end of Asia Minor, with an army in 
 which forty-six nations are represented ! Behold 
 them as they cross the Hellespont ! They are a 
 million of men. They march for the conquest of 
 Greece, but at set of sun " where are they?" 
 Alexander, too, marches over and encamps on 
 these historic shores. He resumes the march and 
 never stops in his conquering career until he 
 crosses the passes of the Himalayas. There he 
 moves down upon the rich lands of India, subdues 
 its princes and weeps for more worlds to conquer. 
 The Roman legions grew luxurious on the plains 
 
ST. PAUL AMONG THE GENTILES. ^j 
 
 of Asia Minor after they made the East the prey of 
 their eagles. Never was there such a theatre of 
 war, conquest, spoil and splendor as Asia Minor ! 
 The Balkan peninsula, between the Black Sea and 
 the ^Egean, bids fair to be a repetition of its his- 
 tory. What is Asia Minor now? In almost every 
 issue of the newspapers of Constantinople we read 
 of the Greek, Kurdish, Circassian and Turkish out- 
 laws. Brigandage makes it almost impossible to 
 travel over these historic and sacred regions with- 
 out a strong escort. Much depends upon the 
 governor of the province, as to whether the 
 tourist has safe conduct, or the missionary protec- 
 tion. 
 
 Asia Minor is not only celebrated for its ancient 
 wars and modern troubles, but its every province 
 is rich with the memories of St. Paul and his com- 
 panions. From Tarsus, where he was born, in 
 Cilicia ; from Aleppo to Antioch, across the Bay 
 of Scanderoon to Pamphylia, Lycia, Caria, Lydia, 
 Mysia, and the other mystical and musical names 
 of which the New Testament is so full, and where 
 Christian churches were early established, there 
 is everywhere some memory of the great apostle 
 of the Gentiles, and some sign of the sufferings 
 and victories which finally made Asia Minor 
 the most profitable and prosperous part of the 
 Christian vineyard and the Byzantine empire. The 
 seven candlesticks of Asia shed from hence their 
 
38 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 refulgence into Macedonia and beyond into Eu- 
 rope. At Ephesus is still shown for Christian 
 veneration the cave of the "Seven Sleepers," 
 and the holy dog which guarded them in their 
 more than Rip Van Winklian nap of two hundred 
 years. 
 
 It is a matter of regret that, owing to an un- 
 fortunate illness, I was unable to make a contem- 
 plated trip to Nicaea, Nicomedia and other places 
 of ecclesiastical celebrity along the shores of the 
 Gulf of Ismid. At one of the villages where we 
 were expected to land the people of all national- 
 ities had made great preparations to receive the 
 American Minister. The Moslem governor called 
 on our missionary, the Rev. Mr. Pierce, and asked 
 permission to ride with him to the landing to meet 
 and greet us. Mr. Pierce begged him not to make 
 any demonstration, as the visit was to be mere- 
 ly a quiet tour. But the village authorities insist- 
 ed that they would be guilty of inhospitable con- 
 duct if they did not show the respect which they 
 felt. As there was no telegraph to countermand 
 the news of our visit, the Governor, with all the 
 village magnates, and the Armenian clergy, went 
 with the Rev. Mr. Pierce to the landing. There 
 was a large cavalcade to escort us to their village. 
 Some five hundred, as I was informed, were on the 
 road at the entrance of the village to do us honor. 
 Moreover, the village streets were cleaned for the 
 
CHALCEDON. 
 
 occasion, an event which the Rev. Dr. Dwight 
 informed me was unparalleled in the history of 
 that country. 
 
 The guide-books tell us very little about the 
 most interesting environment of Constantinople. 
 The most suggestive of its historic pleasure resorts, 
 next to the Hippodrome, with its serpentine col- 
 umn which often gave Delphic responses when 
 it stood on the Greek island in its pagan days, 
 are the precincts of Chalcedon and the shore which 
 runs eastward along the Propontis and from there 
 to Nicaea and Nicomedia. This shore is in 
 sight from the heights of Prinkipo. Along it 
 runs the railroad to Ismid. One of the most in- 
 teresting short tours, especially if you take a sail- 
 boat or a steam-launch, is along this shore. It is 
 not only celebrated for the ecclesiastical councils, 
 out of which our Christian creed came with em- 
 phasis and durability, but it is no less famous for 
 its early classic associations. Chalcedon lies in a 
 vast plain. That plain was once the rendezvous of 
 the troops which were wont to depart from Con- 
 stantinople on their Asiatic campaigns. It is in- 
 dented with beautiful bays. Near one of these 
 bays is the garden of Haider Pasha. It has a 
 shady fountain and a plantain grove. The foun- 
 tain bears a Greek name Hermageros. Noth- 
 ing can exceed the beauty of this spot. I do 
 not see that its charm has been lost by having 
 
3io 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 Kadikeiii near by. This village literally means 
 " the place of the judge." It stands on the site of 
 the ancient Chalcedon, whose ruins are the remains 
 of structures in which were once heard the Grecian 
 oracles and Christian councils. One of the legends 
 of this place is that it was first settled by the 
 Greeks before even ancient Byzantium. At that 
 time some colonists came out from Greece to 
 found a new state. They consulted the oracle 
 at Delphos to know at what point they should 
 settle. The oracle said, " Opposite to the blind." 
 This was interpreted to mean, on the peninsula op- 
 posite Chalcedon. Chalcedon is opposite Stam- 
 boul. For, as it was argued, the founders must 
 have been blind to prefer Chalcedon and neglect 
 such unparalleled advantages as the waters of the 
 Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, which glorify 
 the present harbor of Constantinople. 
 
 There are many warlike stones about the tak- 
 ing of Chalcedon by the Persians. It was be- 
 sieged and mined by them. It has often been 
 taken since and devastated, alike by Greek, By- 
 zantine, Goth, Arabian, Persian and Turk. Beli- 
 sarius figures much in Greek history. Gibbon has 
 given him an immortality. Here is the spot 
 where his palace was erected at the end of his ser- 
 vice. Out of the remains of his palace has arisen 
 the finest structure in Stamboul, the mosque of 
 Suleimanyie. Even the transient traveller cannot 
 
ON THE WA Y TO NIC&A. ^ l j 
 
 be at a loss to fix this point, for there is a tower 
 and lighthouse near by, whose lights, at the sea- 
 son of Bairam, form a double crescent which is 
 reflected in the water. The promontories along 
 the shores were decorated in ancient times with 
 temples. In fact the whole littoral sweep from 
 the lighthouse to Pendik, from which the pilgrim 
 caravans still start for Mecca, is full of historic 
 interest. 
 
 The fourth GEcumenical council is known as 
 the Council of Chalcedon. This is therefore a 
 spot of ecclesiastical renown. It is now, however, 
 merely a railroad station. Here was once a 
 famous church. It was built by Constantine on 
 the site of the Temple of Apollo and demolished 
 after the fall of Constantinople. Its materials 
 served to finish one of the grand mosques of 
 the city. Now on this not neglected spot there is 
 heard the shriek of the locomotive as it moves 
 eastward on its way to Nicsea and Nicomedia, her- 
 alding a new gospel for the worshipper of mam- 
 mon ! It is not altogether modern and prosaic, for 
 doth not its path lead both to the glory and the 
 grave of Hannibal ! Not far from its track Belisar- 
 ius once cultivated his vineyards. I doubt if any- 
 one but myself has ever found the grave of Han- 
 nibal. I saw it in a vision not of Patmos but of 
 Prinkipo ! He died in the neighborhood of what 
 is now the railroad station of Guebsehe ! No one 
 
3 I2 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 in the neighborhood knows anything about the 
 tomb, or the Carthaginian. You will inquire in 
 vain for it. It is always a little further off ; in 
 fact it is an unattainable object, a will-o-the- 
 wisp. There is an old ruined castle in the neigh- 
 borhood. This is often visited. It is Hannibal's 
 castle. It is not apocryphal ! It is not apoca- 
 lyptical. Its architecture belongs to the Middle 
 Ages, and it is not very worthy of that. Its name 
 makes it a standing anachronism. Its ruins are 
 near some thermal waters, which the emperors 
 of Byzantium were accustomed to visit with their 
 families. We can lave in these waters, but Hannibal, 
 alas ! although he perished at the ancient Lybissa, 
 and although the spot is certainly located at the 
 famous camel-stables of the caravan times, before 
 the railroad came, Hannibal and his tomb, I fear, 
 are forever lost to local habitation. 
 
 There are evidences at that place of many 
 tombs. Near by is a splendid mosque which re- 
 minds the traveller of a mosque of Broussa. Here 
 not .unfrequently some traveller of wild archaeo- 
 logical genius rushes with frantic delight to a large 
 tomb with a domed roof, hoping that he has dis- 
 covered the long-lost grave of Hannibal; but it 
 only turns out to be the burial place of a Han- 
 oum a woman of the good old time, who was the 
 mother of forty daughters ! The daughters are 
 buried on either side of her ; twenty in each grave. 
 
THE ANCIENT CITY. ~ j , 
 
 Must this search for Hannibal and his tomb go 
 on forever? 
 
 Nicaea, the once proud capital of Bithynia, is 
 a more interesting than healthy spot. It was 
 founded not by Alexander, but by another son of 
 Philip of Macedon. It was on a lovely plain. It 
 is described by an ancient historian from the stand- 
 point of a stone placed in the gymnasium whence 
 its four gates could be seen. In vain do the 
 English and other tourists, who go there to shoot 
 birds, seek this central stone. Antiquarian 
 travellers have visited it, not so much for its clas- 
 sical associations, as for the religious struggles 
 of the early church which occurred here. The 
 city was beautified upon a Grecian model, and the 
 Romans gave it some utilitarian improvements, as 
 was their wont. It was the capital of a proud 
 nation ; but like other Eastern capitals, it had its 
 distresses by earthquake, and its sieges by sol- 
 diers. For some time it stood a barrier against 
 the progress of Mahometan invaders, and many a 
 Saracen and Turk fell weltering in their blood 
 before its Christian defenders. It was not until 
 the latter part of the eleventh century that the 
 Turks obtained possession of it. Soon after a 
 crusade changed its condition; for within ten 
 years it fell before the Grecian host, which in- 
 vested it by water and land. Gibbon tells the 
 story that numbers of boats were transported 
 
314 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 from the Sea of Marmora to the lake Ascanius. 
 These were filled with soldiers, but before the 
 attack the banner of the Greek emperor floated 
 above the towers. It then became the Greco- 
 Roman capital of Western Asia. But when the 
 Seljukian Orchan the ancestor of the present 
 Sultan arose, the city and the rich treasures col- 
 lected within its walls fell a prey to the Turk. 
 Thereafter Nicaea became known by the less ven- 
 erable and less impressive name of Iznik. 
 
 There is but one Christian church remaining to 
 recall the ancient creed and glory of Nicaea. But 
 as long as the Nicene Creed which was here first 
 promulgated is repeated by the faithful it will be 
 a bond between all Christians and the Eastern 
 Church. That Nicene Creed is recited in its orig- 
 inal tongue by the peasants of Greece. In Russia 
 the great bell of the Kremlin tower sounds during 
 the time its words are being chanted. This creed 
 is repeated aloud in the presence of the assembled 
 people by the Czars at their coronation. It was 
 at the first council of Nicaea that the fathers who 
 are so often quoted met to form this summary of 
 Christian faith against Arianism, and to discuss 
 the supremacy of the Bible, the power of the 
 Pope and the Church, the Sacraments, Original 
 Sin, Predestination, Justification, and above all the 
 question upon which they differed most, the doc- 
 trine of the Incarnation. This latter question was 
 
THE NICENE CREED. r - 
 
 set at rest by the Nicene Creed. The council met 
 in the month of June, A.D. 325. Its creed was 
 signed by three hundred and eighteen bishops. 
 It is substantially the same creed which Christian- 
 ity has accepted at its various councils and con- 
 ventions held during the progress of time, and 
 which it declares to-day. It was confirmed, slight- 
 ly changed, by the council of Constantinople, A.D. 
 381. It is said to be worked in brilliants on 
 the robes of the highest church dignitaries of 
 Moscow. Notwithstanding all the efforts for har- 
 mony which this creed inspired, the unity of the 
 Church of Rome with that of Greece, or rather 
 with that of Russia now, or with that of the Church 
 of England, or with either of them, though often 
 attempted, has never been consummated. The 
 creed remains ; but the exact -place or building in 
 which the famous council assembled has not yet 
 been ascertained. Whether it was in the church, 
 which gave a foundation to the ruined mosque of 
 Orchan, or in the Christian temple, of which there 
 are some remains, no one can tell. 
 
 This country of Asia Minor speaks in every 
 broken pillar and every fragment of stone, not 
 only of the sojournings and teachings of the great 
 apostle of the Gentiles, but it recalls those early 
 days of fiery zeal when the fathers of the Church 
 met to crush out error, and to perfect a creed 
 which survives through the lapse of centuries. 
 
3 1 6 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 The creed remains, vital and mystic, but the 
 swamps and thickets and lakes around the an- 
 cient city of Nicaea mark a place of desolation- 
 fit haunt at the advent of the hunting season 
 for what ? For the hunters of Constantinople, 
 in search of duck and woodcock, and sometimes of 
 the wild boar. 
 
 Nicomedia, another city of Asia Minor, was 
 built in 264 B.C. by Nicomedas, king of Bithynia. 
 He called on the Gauls to help him in some of his 
 wars. There are some sweet Gallic accents yet 
 observable in the dialects spoken along the shore 
 of Marmora. Nicomedia was not only great as a 
 city, but greater as a Roman capital. Its great- 
 ness has been handed down to us by Roman his- 
 torians. Here Pliny was pro-consul. Here he 
 resided and wrote letters to the Emperor Trajan, 
 describing the monuments, advantages and impor- 
 tance of the city and its surroundings. It is 
 thought that Pliny first started the idea of con- 
 necting the waters of the lake of Sabaridja with 
 the Gulf of Nicomedia by means of a canal, and 
 thus cause the waters of this lake to join those of 
 the river Sakaria, which empty into the Black Sea. 
 Herodotus or his annotator discusses this pro- 
 ject, and I received many letters from American 
 students propounding many difficult engineering 
 problems about this important matter. 
 
 Dioclesian embellished Nicomedia with a taste 
 
EARL Y NICOMEDIA. ^ j ~ 
 
 and expense that were unparalleled. It became 
 only inferior to Rome, Alexandria and Antioch 
 in extent and population in classic days. It is 
 celebrated for one of the first general edicts of 
 that emperor commanding the persecution of the 
 Christians. This was in the fourth century. 
 Gibbon relates many interesting details of the 
 martyrdoms of that early day, and especially one 
 holocaust at the end of the fourth century, when 
 a Christian emperor, who was an Arian, caused a 
 ship containing eighty bishops, who belonged to 
 the orthodox faith, to be set on fire in the harbor 
 of Nicomedia. They perished for their creed. 
 Here was the home of Constantine. Along with 
 its rival Nicaea it underwent many sieges, but it 
 is principally renowned, along with Nicsea, for 
 being the seat of early Christian councils. Now 
 like Nicsea, it is principally attractive to the hunt- 
 ers, who go out with shot-guns from Constanti- 
 nople to kill snipe and other game in and around 
 its swamps. The flamingo and the stork are com- 
 mon upon its ways and house-tops, but all the 
 interest left in this capital seems to surround 
 the great soldier of Carthage Hannibal, whose 
 stern parent was very far from being one of the 
 Christian fathers. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 BROUSSA, ITS ENTERPRISE AND HISTORY MOUNT 
 
 OLYMPUS. 
 
 BROUSSA is a city of Asia Minor. It stands in 
 superb contrast with the relict cities of ecclesias- 
 tical glory. It is a thriving business city, with a 
 history worthy of the founders of the Ottoman 
 Empire, who are here buried. I have been at 
 Broussa, but I never surmounted the top of Mount 
 Olympus. It is becoming quite a summer pastime, 
 which our American friends of Robert College- 
 including those of the gentler sex enjoy. They 
 camp out upon the heights and enjoy the prospect, 
 and inhale health. Mrs. Washburne, the wife of 
 the president of Robert College, gives us a descrip- 
 tion of her experience the past summer in tent life 
 upon Mount Olympus. 
 
 If from the heights of Prinkipo so much can be 
 seen, how much more from the top of Olympus, 
 which is seventy-five hundred feet high ? From 
 its lofty dome can be viewed the Sea of Marmora, 
 with its islands, gulfs and promontories, on one 
 side, and the Dardanelles and the countries around 
 it, on the other. 
 
PROSPECT FROM MT. OL YMPUS. 3 l y 
 
 The eye takes in the lakes on the east, where 
 were situated Nicomedia and Nicsea, and the 
 mountains of Bosachan to the west. Such a wide 
 expanse of water ; such magnificent ranges of 
 mountains, and such a lofty standpoint give a 
 ground of vantage that elevates the observer far 
 above the turmoils of our little world. And what 
 a land ! What seas are overlooked from this 
 more than Alpine height ! Here one stands 
 wrapped in thought, not alone because the scenes 
 below have been illustrated in crimson letters by 
 Persian, Greek, Roman and Turkish armies ; not 
 merely that Broussa the most interesting Mos- 
 lem city next to Constantinople which lies at 
 the f6ot of the mountain, was the capital of the 
 first Turkish empire, and still retains the bodies of 
 its early heroes and Sultans, but also that from 
 this elevated point can be seen what is now the 
 ignoble point of Ismid, where was once the proud 
 capital of Bithynia, the famed city of Nicomedia. 
 It was once the residence of emperors ; but now 
 it is only a memory ! We have not to ascend 
 Olympus to see it. It is almost within the range 
 of our vision from the hills of Prinkipo. 
 
 It would be a pleasant thing to compare our 
 Mysean Olympus with the Olympus which Homer 
 has peopled and glorified with the divinities. 
 Both mountains are within the jurisdiction of 
 our legation. The Olympus which the won- 
 
3 20 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 drous mythology of Greece gave to the world 
 is just over the boundary of Greece. But it is 
 also within the precincts of Macedonia, which is 
 in Turkey. My servitor, Pierre, has been on the 
 heights of the Grecian Olympus with a company of 
 engineers. He was their purveyor. He knows 
 all about the monastery of Saint Dionysius, before 
 which and its ministers the light of Apollo has 
 shone and the eagle of Jove has flown. He is 
 acquainted with the guides, who are known as 
 " clefts," called so, perhaps, because they are famil- 
 iar w T ith the rocks. Having ascended the classic 
 mountain, he gives me an account of its holy oaks, 
 catalpas, arbutuses, pines and firs, and the glory of 
 the adjacent mountains. From its summit one can 
 overlook the sea, as to which Pierre becomes elo- 
 quent in his description. He forgets his French 
 and other alien tongues in telling the glory of the 
 
 " Long line of foam, the jewelled chain, 
 The largesse of the ever-giving main." 
 
 He relapses into his own language of Croatia, 
 with whose coast he is as familiar as I am now 
 with the inlets and seas about Prinkipo. Within 
 view of Olympus are the shoreless cliffs of 
 Ossa. 
 
 How glorious and great is the peak of the clas- 
 sic Olympus ! To the north is the level plain 
 diversified with woodlands. On the opposite side 
 
THE CLASSIC OLYMPUS. 32 1 
 
 of the water are the promontories, one after an- 
 other Athos, Tomina and beyond these some 
 of the islands of the ^Egean lift themselves 
 out of the blue waves into the beautiful blue 
 sky. 
 
 This wonderful home of the gods, this Grecian 
 Olympus, which fills such a grand page in our my- 
 thology and rhetoric, is now undignified by many 
 saw-mills turned by its obedient streams. Thus 
 are the naiads enslaved and the dryads dishev- 
 elled of their leafy glories, while the waters plash 
 and the wheel turns, and the saws eat their eager 
 way into the timber that is sent thence to Smyrna, 
 to Constantinople and even to Egypt. Non 
 constat but I am now sitting in a chair whose 
 ligneous fibre grew under the very shadow of the 
 throne of Zeus. I revert to my callow college 
 days. I ask: Where are Venus and Mars? 
 Where the glories of that wonderful company of 
 gods, with Jove above them all by his great 
 looks and power imperial ? Gone into the 
 dim yet deathless traditions of the past, which 
 made this mountain so weird in its witchery 
 and sacred in its power over the poetic Greek 
 imagination. What poet of the future will sing 
 "Olympus Lost" ? 
 
 The classic Olympus has now come down to this : 
 that the most conspicuous tradition of our Ho- 
 meric mount connects itself with a bear. The 
 
3 22 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 legend is told by the monks of St. Dionysius. 
 When that saintly father was ploughing on the 
 mountain side, he was forced to leave his ox 
 with the plough in the furrow. While away, a 
 bear came along and ate up his ox. The saint on 
 his return discovered what had happened. He 
 No, he did not curse and swear, but he was very 
 mad with the bear, and he determined to punish 
 bruin in a way not to his taste. With a power that 
 belonged almost to the supreme Zeus himself, he 
 seized and harnessed the larcenous ox-lifting bruin. 
 Forever after that bear had to drag that plough. 
 He became quite tame and grizzly in the hon- 
 orable service of Ceres. When the family of 
 bears found what his saintship had done with their 
 fellow, they incontinently turned tail and fled the 
 Mount Olympus, just as the snakes scurried from 
 Ireland when they heard that St. Patrick had 
 landed. 
 
 While the Macedonian Olympus soars high in 
 the clouds of classic lore, it cannot compare, 
 except in the number of its peaks, with our own 
 Mysean Olympus. The classic Olympus has a 
 triple crown. Olympus of Asia Minor has but 
 two summits. Although the classic Olympus has 
 a name which signifies the " Shining One," and 
 is called the white, the dazzling, and gleaming 
 mount by the Greek poets, it may as well be 
 stated in prose that no part of this Homeric 
 
THE SERENE HEIGHTS. 
 
 Olympus is within the limit of perpetual snow ; 
 while our Asian Olympus never fails to shine with 
 its white perennial crown ! No one can gainsay 
 that the surroundings of the classic Olympus are 
 something magnificent. Its effect is grand. Here 
 is Ossa.. It too has magnificent views. It com- 
 mands a wide expanse of sea beneath its aspect. 
 Olympus is nine thousand feet high ; but its 
 weak point is that the country on one side is 
 almost wholly excluded from view. This is 
 owing to a double line of summits. Scholars 
 who have ascended its classic eminence find it 
 no unworthy position for the gods It has a 
 serener ether than belongs to our lower nature, 
 and there is an odor of sanctity around its 
 monastery. The early Greek believed that its 
 atmosphere was never disturbed by wind, storm, 
 snow or clouds. It was always divine. The 
 clouds below its tranquil summit were the beau- 
 tiful gates of heaven to the sensitive Greek. 
 When Jove rolled them back, Apollo gave them 
 hue and beauty. What a palace was that of 
 Jupiter! What a council -chamber that of the 
 other gods ! What a course for their chariots and 
 races on the summit of the mountain ! 
 
 But to enter these mystic scenes and precincts 
 is to go beyond the limits prescribed for this vol- 
 ume. Lest I awake the ire of Homer or his 
 students, I will not further make comparison be- 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 tween the two Olympian heights. The best I can 
 do is to come down from these heights and flights 
 and describe things as they are to-day in this 
 ancient wonderland. If we were to describe the 
 various peaks upon the classic Olympus and the 
 legends connected with them, the classic mountain 
 might be reduced to a lower plane than that of the 
 Olympus which the learned regard with so much 
 pedantic devotion. 
 
 Shakespeare has made the scenes about our clas- 
 sic Olympus interesting. His genius seized Pelion 
 and piled it on Ossa in a wild way. Ossa is a 
 smaller rock than Olympus; but what huge rocks 
 they are ! When the vale of Tempe opens to the 
 sea between them, it is a picture of Claude, repre- 
 senting beauty at the feet of strength ! 
 
 Along the coast of the ^Egean, Pelion lies 
 near Ossa, and along with Mount Olympus they 
 
 look across the sea to the scene of the great 
 
 i 
 Trojan epic. 
 
 It is a custom, even to the present day, among 
 the Grecian Christian women when they are 
 enceinte, to slide down one of the smooth places 
 on the side of the classic mountain. It is a sign 
 of a happy deliverance. And as they slide, they 
 sing a peculiar song in Greek. It has reference 
 to their future destiny, or that of the expected 
 child. 
 
 There is still another eminence nearer our home, 
 
A TURKISH MOUNTAIN. 
 
 325 
 
 though lesc classic and historic than either of the 
 Olympii. It is a Turkish Dagh. 
 
 One of the best points of observation for a 
 view of the landscape in and around Constanti- 
 nople is the Mount Bougourlow. It rises only 
 a few miles behind Scutari on the Asiatic side. 
 When you climb to its summit the panorama of the 
 Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmora is spread be- 
 neath you. This mountain is not only frequented 
 by strangers who desire to survey the prospect, 
 but by the Mahometan women, who go there in 
 good weather to pass the day under its pleasant 
 trees. They go in little companies. Sometimes 
 the harem goes. The women watch their chil- 
 dren at play ; they chat ; they listen to itinerant 
 music ; and they have their picnic of grapes, bread 
 and sherbet, topped off with a smoke of the fra- 
 grant weed. 
 
 The ascent to this mountain is by no means 
 easy. The roads are hardly passable. The prin- 
 cipal vehicle is the arabi a lumbering carriage 
 drawn by oxen. But it makes up in gaudy 
 finery what it lacks in speed. There are many 
 little plateaus to break the ascent of the moun- 
 tain. Here you can rest. On each plateau are 
 seen families of both Armenians and Turks 
 resting on their lazy route upward. The situa- 
 tion is so high, the sea breeze so grateful, the 
 temperature so refreshing, and the dealers in cof- 
 
326 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 fee, water, sherbet, pastry and confectionery are 
 so numerous that the spectacle upon the top 
 of the mountain is as festive as the wide-spread 
 panorama below is sublime. The women sit 
 upon the grass under their sun-shades. They 
 are clad in their varicolored and shining silk 
 dresses. Some recline beneath the shade of the 
 sycamores and plane-trees. The gayety and nov- 
 elty are enhanced by a bevy of Greek girls. You 
 easily recognize them. They are known by their 
 diadems of braided hair. They amuse themselves 
 with the dance in movements which require little 
 exertion, but which are full of the poetry of mo- 
 tion. These performances you may see repeated 
 at the " Sweet Waters." 
 
 This scene is seductive with attractions, but 
 your ascent to the mountain is for another pur- 
 pose. Here the eye roams over the prospect 
 of the great city, with its domes and minarets 
 upon the west. On the east is a vast plateau 
 or prairie. Over it runs the old road of the 
 caravans. It leads out of Scutari into the very 
 heart of Asia. On the north is the Black Sea 
 and old Cimmeria, the land of blackness and 
 blockheads! On the south is our own island 
 home of Prinkipo flanked by Bothnia and Troy. 
 Turn where you will every prospect pleases. 
 Not the least of the delights is the circle im- 
 mediately around you. Here are the Zigani play- 
 
FOUNDERS OF TURKISH EMPIRE. ^ 2 *J 
 
 ing upon the fiddle. They chant ballads in their 
 strange gypsy dialect. Here pleasure, innocence 
 and gayety abound. The groups are as joyous as 
 one could wish to see. One feels tempted to re- 
 main here long As the company descend the 
 mountain shouts of wild laughter from the arabis 
 answer to each new plunge of the awkward vehicles. 
 Horsemen dash down as recklessly as if they were 
 on a level. Everything bespeaks a scene entirely 
 Asiatic and far removed from the Europe which 
 is in view from the summit. In such glimpses we 
 catch rare views of the harmonious blendings of 
 Greek and Turkish life, suggestive of the blend- 
 ings of the two races which gave so much force 
 and romance to the Mahometan empire in Europe. 
 
 The founder of the Ottoman dynasty, Othman, 
 was an extraordinary person. He left not only a 
 great name, but a sovereignty over the greater 
 part of little Asia. Starting with an army of only 
 416 horsemen, he increased it to 6000. When he 
 died he left neither gold nor silver behind, only a 
 spoon and a salt-cellar, an embroidered caftan, a 
 new turban, some flags in red muslin, a stable full 
 of horses, some yokes of oxen for the laborers of 
 the farm, and a choice flock of sheep. These 
 sheep were the ancestors to the imperial flocks 
 which were fed at the foot of Mount Olympus, 
 and this man was the ancestor of the imperial 
 rulers of the great Ottoman empire. 
 
 Orkhan was his second son and his successor. 
 
32 
 
 PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 He had great skill in ornamentation and evidently 
 was romantically inclined, for the buildings which 
 he caused to be erected are covered with poetical 
 inscriptions. Whenever he founded a college he 
 also established a soup kitchen. The villages 
 which are called after his name are numerous. 
 His reign was unsullied either by barbarity or 
 violence. He is known as the Numa of the Otto- 
 mans. What I wish to remark in relation to this 
 family is this : Their tombs at Broussa are noted 
 in history. The munificence of these princes to- 
 ward Broussa has its monuments in the chari- 
 table institutions which they erected. Niloufer 
 Khatoun was the first wife of the Sultan Orkhan. 
 She founded one hundred and eleven charitable 
 institutions. Some of them are in Nicaea. She 
 passed the end of her life at that place in quiet 
 retirement, and was always regarded as a most 
 excellent and pious princess. 
 
 It may be thought that the Sultans are not per- 
 mitted to marry outside of their own religion. 
 They are not so restricted in choice. It is a fact 
 that the strength and glory of the Ottoman dy- 
 nasty has been sustained by the marriage of its 
 Sultans with Christian women. The virtuous 
 princess Niloufer, whose body lies near the walls 
 of Broussa. was a Christian, and she is in such 
 contrast with Roxolana, another Christian wife 
 of a subsequent emperor, that it is well to regard 
 the one and discard the other. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 EUROPEAN SHORE SAN STEFANO AND THE TREATY. 
 
 SAN STEFANO is always in sight on a clear day 
 from the Princes Islands. It leaves one indelible 
 historic impression. It is connected with the war 
 which began in the autumn of 1877 between Rus^ 
 sia and Turkey. Of that war and its various for- 
 tunes I shall speak in a more elaborate volume 
 than this "The Diversions of a Diplomat" 
 which I contemplate publishing. The diplomacy 
 in which Lord Salisbury who was the agent of 
 Lord Beaconsfield took so .conspicuous a part at 
 that time, is associated with the very room where 
 I now pen this chapter. Here, no doubt, Salis- 
 bury dreamt dreams and saw visions. The device 
 of Midhad Pacha then grand vizier to disarm 
 the hostility of the European congress or concert 
 by proclaiming a liberal constitution ; the adhesion 
 of England to Turkey; the isolation of the Czar; 
 the crossing of the Danube, upon which the Great 
 White Father of all the Russians invoked the 
 blessing of God as he gave the order to advance ; 
 the move on the Balkans ; the cries against the in- 
 fidels ; the sacred hymns of the old Greek Church 
 
 329 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 heralding the Slavonic army all these are a part 
 of that conflict which had its consummation and 
 mise en seine at San Stefano. In that movement 
 the Russians had two hundred and twenty thou- 
 sand men, and the Turks about the same number. 
 In soldierly bearing and qualities these armies 
 were nearly equal. They were equally enthusiastic 
 and brave. In arms the Turks were, perhaps, 
 better off than the Russians. Three hundred 
 thousand American rifles, the Peabody-Martini 
 gun which is still to be seen in the hands of the 
 Turkish soldier, had been stacked for the emer- 
 gency in the barracks of Constantinople. Iron- 
 clads filled the Golden Horn. Germany supplied 
 the Turk with cannon which were as much supe- 
 rior to the old bronze guns, as the Martini rifle was 
 in advance of the old Revolutionary musket of our 
 fathers. The Russians were, perhaps, superior in 
 cavalry. The Cossack was then thought to have 
 no equal. This was before the day when the 
 Arab of the desert with spear and horse broke the 
 squares of the flower of Albion's infantry in the 
 Soudan. But the fighting was not to be done on 
 horse-back. The Turks were in their own coun- 
 try. They had the mountain range of the Bal- 
 kans, so celebrated in military history from the 
 time when Darius crossed the Bosphorus to fight 
 the Scythians. Bulgaria then, as now, was the 
 objective point. Generals Gourko and Skoboleff 
 
WAR WITH RUSSIA. 33! 
 
 led the Russian armies. As the people of many 
 of the towns through which the Russians passed 
 were adherents of the Greek Church, they wel- 
 comed the Russians as deliverers. Priests, monks 
 and girls met the Slav soldiers with flowers and 
 benedictions. 
 
 The Turks were aroused. Their armies were 
 concentrated upon the Balkans. All Europe be- 
 held their magnificent fighting at the Shipka Pass. 
 Plevna became almost another Thermopylae in 
 the way of the advancing Slav. The Czar himself 
 soon found his presence necessary to inspire the 
 stolid Russian soldier. 
 
 The advance was easy, until all at once the 
 Shipka Pass was found to be defended by the 
 Turks, and Plevna made its heroic resistance ! 
 In spite of the gallant fighting on the part of 
 the Turks, the Russians found themselves south 
 of the Balkans. Was there a panic in Constan- 
 tinople ? Was there terror at the Porte and dis- 
 may in Dolma-Batche and the palaces ? Was 
 there a packing up of archives? Was there 
 to be another hegira of the Mohammedan and 
 another exodus of the Jews ? All this has been 
 said. 
 
 The intensity of religious emotion was invoked 
 in the rank and file of the Russian army. The 
 splendid ritual of the Greek Church was called 
 in to take the place of the drum and fife. With 
 
352 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 uncovered head, the sad chants peculiar to the 
 Greek Church gave solemnity to the scene. It 
 was no summer holiday, that fight in the Bal- 
 kans. At length Osman Pacha, who so long 
 withstood the skill of Todleben, surrenders with 
 his army. Plevna falls. It is the turning-point of 
 the war. The Russians push down toward Con- 
 stantinople. With an audacity unequalled they 
 press on towards the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, 
 where for the first time since A.D. 1434, a Chris- 
 tian army is seen. 
 
 "On to Philippopolis ! " "On to Adrianople !" 
 The victorious Russians press on, until on the 
 last day of January, 1878, the minarets of Con- 
 stantinople appear. 
 
 The passage of the Balkans was a wonderful 
 achievement. It was a terrible struggle amidst 
 the storms of the winter season. Even as I now 
 write, in this balmy clime, and so near the Balkan 
 range, the snow is blocking its passes. 
 
 How far did that war limit the power of Tur- 
 key ? By what miracle did the Caliph of all 
 Mahometanism survive the conflict of race and 
 religion ? This is not the place to seek the casus 
 belli, or to criticise the strategy by which the Rus- 
 sian army reached the plains of San Stefano. On 
 the memorable third of March, A.D. 1878, the little 
 village, whose white houses now appear upon my 
 vision, was the scene, after a month of negotia- 
 
TREA TY OF SAN STEFANO. 3 ^ 3 
 
 tion, of the celebration of the peace by what is 
 known as the " Treaty of San Stefano." 
 
 This village is not without some American asso- 
 ciations. It is the place where Commodore Porter, 
 of " Essex " fame, first fixed the American Lega- 
 tion. It is situated on the Sea of Marmora, and 
 within six miles of the Golden Gate, from whose 
 towers I have gazed upon the grand campaign, 
 where the vast Russian army was encamped. 
 
 But it is most distinguished as the place where 
 the treaty between Russia and Turkey was made. 
 That treaty was made by General Ignatieff. It 
 was set aside afterwards by the treaty of Berlin, 
 owing to the energetic protest of the Powers. 
 The protest was backed by the British Navy, 
 which was anchored between the islands of Halki 
 and Prinkipo, in the same .blue waters through 
 which I am accustomed to glide in our American 
 navy of the Orient, the steam-launch "Sunset." 
 
 It was thought when the Russian army came 
 in sight of the minarets of Stamboul that the rule 
 of the Turk in Europe was forever ended, that 
 his encampment was broken up and that he would 
 retreat into Asia. Judging from the enormous 
 number of refugees who fled before the advanc- 
 ing Russian army, this was then a reasonable ex- 
 pectation. 
 
 There were other Powers, however, to be dealt 
 with before Russia could be permitted to fly her 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 flag from the dome of St. Sophia. The English 
 fleet passed up the Dardanelles. There, on the 
 plains of San Stefano, were rolled back the waves 
 of Russian invasion which almost swept over the 
 walls of Constantinople ! 
 
 The war, not to speak of the treaty, which was 
 more or less abrogated afterwards at Berlin, had 
 the effect of greatly circumscribing Turkish do- 
 minion in Europe. It severed Bosnia, Servia, 
 Herzegovina, Montenegro, Roumania and Bulga- 
 ria, and portions of Thessaly from the empire. 
 But the Moslem domination over a large portion 
 of Turkey in Europe still remains. Judging by 
 recent events, the power of the Turk is stronger 
 to-day than it was ten years ago. 
 
 Although the village of San Stefano has a place 
 in diplomatic history, it consists of only about 
 twenty or thirty houses. These houses are large. 
 They are owned by wealthy Greek merchants who 
 inhabit them during the summer. When the 
 Russians were preparing to move on Constanti- 
 nople, these houses were occupied by the Grand 
 Duke Nicholas and his staff. There is a quay 
 upon the Sea of Marmora upon which the village 
 fronts. During the winter and spring of 1878 
 there could be heard at these Princes Islands, 
 floating across the waters, the music of the Rus- 
 sian bands. It is not unlikely that this alien mu- 
 sic was heard by the young Sultan, who had only 
 
INCIDENTS OF THE RUSSIAN SIEGE. ^$$ 
 
 a year or two before that time come into power. 
 
 The Russians remained at San Stefano during 
 the armistice. The officers, and after a while 
 some of the men, were allowed to visit Constanti- 
 nople. It is said that they behaved themselves 
 in a most exemplary manner. Certainly they 
 pleased the merchants of the bazaars. It is reck- 
 oned that six millions of rubles in gold, a sum 
 equivalent to $4,600,000, were then paid into the 
 shops by the Russians. During this time al- 
 though there was a mercantile entente cordiale, 
 the treaty hung fire. The Russians became impa- 
 tient at the dilatoriness of the Turks in signing the 
 treaty. The 3rd of March rolled around ; it was 
 the anniversary of the Czar's accession ; and the 
 negotiations were abruptly ended. At one o'clock 
 in the afternoon the troops were drawn up as for 
 parade. The horses of the Grand Duke and his 
 staff were saddled. Still the Turks delayed to 
 sign the treaty. Couriers dashed fleetly between 
 the house of the Grand Duke and that in which 
 were the negotiators Ignatieffand Savfet Pasha. 
 At last the Russian menace /was heeded. The in- 
 tended attack upon the city was turned into a 
 " Review," and the army was informed that the 
 war had ended. 
 
 It has lately transpired that, when the Russian 
 army was near Constantinople, Count Schouvaloff 
 telegraphed to the Czar that England would not 
 
336 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 interfere with the occupation of the city by the 
 Russians, provided no attempts were made by the 
 Russians to seize Gallipoli and blockade the iron- 
 clads within the Golden Horn. The Czar trusted 
 to Schouvaloff. He was the ambassador at Lon- 
 don. He believed that the city would be occu- 
 pied without British intervention. It is alleged 
 that on the receipt of this dispatch the Czar 
 telegraphed to General Gourko at San Stefano 
 commanding the troops to march into and oc- 
 cupy the city. Of course, the dispatch was in ci- 
 pher ; but it could not reach San Stefano without 
 passing through Turkish hands. It is said that 
 the Turks so transposed the ciphers that when 
 the telegram was received by Gourko it was 
 utterly unintelligible. The general had all the 
 shrewdness of his army at work upon the dis- 
 patch, but in vain. Thus, two most momentous 
 days passed by ; and the British cabinet meanwhile 
 were advised by the Turkish minister at London 
 of the peril. The British cabinet immediately 
 directed the minister at St. Petersburg to state to 
 the Czar that the occupation of the city would be 
 regarded as a casus belli. The result of the curt 
 dispatch was the treaty and not the occupation. 
 
 This remarkable statement is vouched for by Dr. 
 Blowitz, the Paris correspondent of the London 
 Times. " Upon what a slender thread hang ever- 
 lasting things !" How it ended, we know. The 
 
HAPPY ACCORD. 
 
 337 
 
 Grand Duke telegraphed to the Czar the same 
 night that the great and holy mission which he 
 had assumed, of liberating the Christians from the 
 Mussulman yoke, had been accomplished. There- 
 upon preparations were made to re-establish the 
 old diplomatic relations at the Muscovite and Ot- 
 toman capitals. Thereupon the Grand Duke and 
 his suite danced the Cracovienne on the marble 
 pavements of Beylerbey ; not as a conqueror, but 
 as a guest of the Sultan ! 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 PRINKIPO ITS GREEK AND OTHER WOMAN. 
 
 IN a former chapter I have stated that Mur- 
 ray's guide-book gives it out that the women of 
 Prinkipo are the most beautiful in the world. I 
 am ready to believe that Murray, on this topic, is 
 nearly, if not absolutely, veracious. I will not say 
 that every one is a Miranda or a Una, or even a 
 Helen ; for there are many females on this isl- 
 and who are neither youthful nor attractive. But, 
 according to the best standards of taste, there are 
 more beautiful women here than I have ever seen 
 among the same number in any other part of the 
 world. Perhaps it is because they are modelled 
 upon the eclectic principle of the ancient Greek 
 artist who, to make one perfect form, selected from 
 many beauties the conspicuous loveliness of each. 
 The Greek blood- upon this island is of a purer 
 strain than can be found upon the mainland of 
 Greece. This is also the case in the Cyclades 
 and other Grecian islands nearer the ancient 
 capital of art and genius. The classic costumes 
 are not quite the mode of Prinkipo, but they still 
 remain the fashion in the inland of the Greek pen- 
 
 338 
 
GREEK WOMAN FROM THE INTERIOR. 
 
CLASSIC GREEK MODELS. 339 
 
 insula and many of the islands of the /Egean. 
 Now and then, here in Prinkipo, you may see young 
 Greek girls dressed in European style, but seldom 
 without retaining the jacket of embroidered silk 
 and the coiffure, which remind you of the an- 
 cient costume. The chiselled features of these 
 young graces show the classic model. Greece is 
 now best represented in her old colonial depend- 
 encies. In the islands the living models of Phid- 
 ias, Praxiteles and Lysippus are by no means rare. 
 Whatever changes the latest fashions of Paris 
 may make, they do not affect the graceful classic 
 dressing of the hair. It is still parted in waves, 
 just as we see it in the antiques with which every 
 archaeologist is familiar. These waving bands 
 flow over the temple on each side and are encir- 
 cled by a large braid forming a sort of crown. I 
 am not prepared to say that these braids are al- 
 ways genuine. Their different shades of color 
 suggest a suspicion of the ancient as well as mod- 
 ern art. Nor am I prepared to discriminate very 
 greatly between womankind, in grace of form and 
 movement. Still one would have to be blind not 
 to see in the evening balcony-groups of Prinkipo 
 many a beauty whose very pose suggests the clas- 
 sic type. Even the touch of the finger to the 
 forehead in repose " like one who with a pleased 
 look leans upon a closed book " gives a serenity, 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 proportionateness and beauty altogether unique 
 and Hellenic, and rarely seen elsewhere. 
 
 Visitors who write about Turkey more fre- 
 quently go into raptures over the Turkish woman 
 than over her Greek sister. Is it because the 
 beauty of Turkish women is only partly revealed ? 
 The best writer upon the Orient whom I have 
 read, " Eothen," is an exception to this rule. He 
 seems to have been more enamored of the beauti- 
 ful descendants of the old Ionian race, whom he 
 found along the shores of Asia Minor and in its 
 splendid cities of Beyrout and Smyrna. But his 
 picture of the Smyrniote lady is somewhat dim, as 
 if he were under a spell. He sees Greek beau- 
 ties everywhere in these cities, even in the humblest 
 mud cottages. They are all attired with magnifi- 
 cence " their classic heads are crowned with scar- 
 let, and loaded with jewels, or coins of gold the 
 whole wealth of the wearers." Thus far he writes 
 with considerable fidelity, for the Greek woman 
 wears her dowry or fortune upon her person. It 
 is an investment made for safety, as well as adorn- 
 ment. It has its convenience also, for the suitor, 
 instead of going to a public office to ascertain, from 
 the will of her father or the record of public taxes, 
 the value of her estate, can, while he admires the 
 contour of his mistress's head, reckon it therefrom. 
 When " Eothen " gazes long and longingly at the 
 features of the Greek he finds some artificiality. 
 
RHAPSODY OF TOURISTS. 
 
 341 
 
 " Their features," he says, " are touched with a 
 savage pencil, which hardens the outline of eyes 
 and eyebrows, and lends an unnatural fire to the 
 stern, grave looks with which they pierce your 
 brain." Evidently he is becoming more or less 
 inflamed, for he says further on : " Endure their 
 fiery eyes as best you may and ride on slowly and 
 reverently, for facing you from the side of the 
 transom that looks longwise through the street, 
 you see the one glorious shape transcendent in its 
 beauty ; you see the massive braid of hair as it 
 catches a touch of light on its jetty surface and 
 the broad, calm, angry brow the large black eyes, 
 deep-set, and self-relying like the eyes of a con- 
 queror, with their rich shadows of thought lying 
 darkly around them, you see the thin fiery nos- 
 tril, and the bold line of the chin and throat, dis- 
 closing all the fierceness and all the pride, pas- 
 sion and power that can live along with the rare 
 womanly beauty of those sweetly turned lips." 
 
 This rhapsody comes from a man whose travels 
 through the Orient were of a most sedate and 
 philosophic quality, and who is quoted after fifty 
 years as no other writer upon these lands has 
 been quoted. Evidently this gifted writer went 
 clean daft upon his inspiring theme. What a 
 climax he makes in his description of the Greek 
 beauties ! He falls into an ecstasy when he says : 
 " But then there is a terrible stillness in this breath- 
 
342 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 ing image ; it seems like the stillness of a savage 
 that sits intent, and brooding day by day, upon 
 some one fearful scheme of vengeance, but yet 
 more like, it seems, to the stillness of an immortal, 
 whose will must be known, and obeyed without 
 sign or speech. Bow down ! Bow down, and 
 adore the young Persephone, transcendent Queen 
 of Shades ! " 
 
 What should "Eothen" have said when he en- 
 countered, as he often did, the genuine girl of the 
 desert ; not in the palace or harem, but in the tent, 
 surrounded by the associations which gave to the 
 East its sweetest lyrics. Sometimes such an Arab 
 girl is known to sing her songs from native in- 
 spiration. One of these songs echoes in my mem- 
 ory as it is sighed rather than sung beside the foun- 
 tains of Damascus. It is a melancholy strain, but it 
 has the essence of contrast and patriotism, which is 
 the spirit of poetry. She praises her russet suit of 
 camel's-hair as dearer to her than the trappings of 
 a queen ; the humble tent as better than the tow- 
 ers and halls of the splendor around ; the frolicsome 
 colt as more beauteous than the gorgeous mule 
 of the pasha ; the barking of the watch-dog as a 
 sweeter sound than the melody of the lute ; and, 
 as a climax, the rustic youth, unspoiled by art, 
 poor but free, with whom she will roam the desert, 
 though all the pampered sons of wealth should 
 seek to woo her from his love. 
 
BOUQUET OF ORIENTAL BEAUTIES. 343 
 
 Closely assimilated with the Grecian woman in 
 beauty, and having each her own peculiar loveli- 
 ness, is the Armenian, Persian, Hebraic and Otto- 
 man woman. All are, in one word, of Oriental 
 type. Artists have portrayed the large black 
 eye, its languid lustre and liquid splendor ; the 
 heavenly arch of the brow, and the delicate soft- 
 ness and smoothness of the skin which tell of the 
 bath and its constant use. But no one can picture 
 the beauties of these Oriental women. The rose, 
 the pearl, the alabaster, are but feeble symbols of 
 their loveliness. Their courtly ease, low sweet 
 voice, innocent jocund laugh, and the honeyed talk, 
 make a poem of enchantment surpassing the sensu- 
 ous imagination of Keats. It may be that the Ar- 
 menian women are of the earth and earthy ; but 
 their graces betoken the nearness of their country 
 to the Garden of Eden, and the absence of the after- 
 math which sin brought from thence into the world. 
 The Turkish woman does not dress as gaudily 
 as the Persian, nor does she bloom so much in 
 the fictitious glories of painted womanhood. She 
 has her own mode of pencilling the eyebrow 
 and arranging the veil which defies competition. 
 But when called for an out-door promenade in a 
 long and graceless feridjie she does not show that 
 elegance which one might possibly see if he were 
 allowed within the harem. The contrast between 
 the indoor dress, both in Pefsia and here farther 
 
344 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 west, and the walking attire, must strike every 
 traveller who has had the privilege to draw it 
 from life. 
 
 The more characteristic charms of the Circas- 
 sian, while she may be passing fair, consist of a 
 tall and well formed figure, dark eye-lashes and 
 bright chestnut hair ; but sometimes that element 
 of the old Tartaric strain a high cheek bone or 
 wide mouth, is too prominent a feature. Her 
 charms are more or less concealed by the veil. 
 Diamonds and other jewellery illumine her hair. 
 Her dress is brightened and colored to attract the 
 eye and rivet the gaze. 
 
 The Lady of Lima is one of the beautiful flow- 
 ers of the great Spanish plant on our own hemi- 
 sphere. She is said to be all eyes. The way she 
 wears her saya y manto gives her such a coquettish 
 and bewitching air, that, if all her other features 
 were ugly, she would be rescued by the glory of 
 her eye and garment. The Lady of Lima has 
 been known unconsciously to entrance her own 
 husband in passing along the street ! Although 
 only one eye is visible at such times, the orb of 
 the Spanish ladies is of such a large, deep, liquid 
 black, that her glance through her cr$pe mantle 
 from China becomes auxiliary to many a heart- 
 breaking infelicity. The Peruvian and Andalu- 
 sian beauty is but another type of the Oriental 
 
ARTIFICIAL ADORNMENT. ^4$ 
 
 woman under American and European acclimati- 
 zation. 
 
 It would seem that the blonde is just now 
 most affected by the Turkish women. Fair hair, 
 and blue eyes or gray, are not, however, admired 
 by their Persian sisters, although in Persia a fair 
 skin and florid complexion are much sought after. 
 But, strange to say, that even though nature may 
 have been unstinted in her gifts to these East- 
 ern women, art is not seldom called in with her 
 rouge and powder. I am told that the beauties of 
 the harem, in Persia at least, are like full blown 
 peonies. I have seldom seen a Turkish woman 
 who rouged her face. She may paint her eye- 
 brows and powder her neck, but rouge does not 
 seem to be one of her adornments. The Persian 
 generally gives her suffrage to the jet black, al- 
 most blue-black, long hair. After the Egyptian 
 and Oriental method, still seen upon temple and 
 tomb, it is worn plaited into a number of tiny braids 
 whose ends peep forth coquettishly from beneath 
 the veil. But neither in Persia nor in Egypt, nor 
 in Turkey, is the contour of the ankle revealed by 
 the walking attire. For four thousand years the 
 women of the East have been under formal and 
 constant restraint before their lords and masters. 
 They will not uncover their face before any man 
 except their father or husband. Therefore they 
 put on an outward dress that makes them all 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 look alike. This costume was borne from the 
 East to Andalusia and thence to Spanish Amer- 
 ica. The veil of the East is, therefore, not only 
 an Asiatic but an American institution. 
 
 In Turkey, thirty odd years ago, when I first 
 visited it, the trousers, that are yet common in 
 Persia, were the rage. Then much female para- 
 phernalia were crowded into these voluminous 
 trousers which were gathered at the ankle when 
 a Turkish lady desired to make a promenade 
 abroad. I have noticed that during the interven- 
 ing time the Turkish women have learned to 
 correct the ungainly gait which came from wear- 
 ing slippers at the extremity of their stockingless 
 legs a custom which even Byron remarked was 
 " one of the disenchantments of their beauty." 
 
 I have tried to describe the women of the East ; 
 but how can my pen, with its sameness and tame- 
 ness of words, picture the rare form and alluring 
 graces of these maids of the Isle of Prinkipo ? 
 If they are not good, as Miranda remarked of 
 her lover in another enchanted isle, then good 
 spirits will try to dwell in such forms of loveliness. 
 As some one sings : " Nature herself disjoins the 
 beauteous and profane ; and beauty is virtue 
 made visible in outward grace." Ah ! if one could 
 always incarnate within these outward forms the 
 Florence Nightingales of our earth, where could 
 be found more exquisite caskets of the soul with- 
 
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE HER APPEARANCE. 347 
 
 in ! A friend who saw this rare woman here dur- 
 ing the Crimean war tells me that she was held in 
 the greatest honor among both men and women. 
 
 " How," I asked, "did she look? how was she 
 dressed ? " 
 
 The answer was : 
 
 " Her short brown hair was combed over her 
 forehead, while her childlike and wasted figure 
 seemed to give more grace to her goodness. 
 When I saw her in her black dress which was 
 held by a large enamelled brooch, surrounded 
 by a wreath of laurel (an offering of the sol- 
 diers), and her little white cap with a white crape 
 handkerchief thrown over it, leaving but a border 
 of lace to be seen, she was the picture of a nun, 
 " breathless with adoration ! " 
 
 This was the woman of heaven's own type of 
 beauty, the angel of the hospitals, the pearl of 
 the camp. I asked for more particulars as to her 
 personality. My friend responded : 
 
 " She had a Roman nose, small dark eyes, keen 
 yet kind. She was orderly and ladylike in manner." 
 
 All of this is in sharp contrast with the luxuri- 
 ous gifts and physical graces of these women of 
 this isle of princes and princesses. 
 
 But because Florence Nightingale was too good 
 to be less than an angel, we must not forget that 
 there may be still some Circes, Calypsos, Helens, 
 Sapphos and Aspasias. But happily they are rare 
 
348 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 among the Christian women whose devotion is the 
 soul of the Orthodox Church. Such women are 
 the rule. If there be others they are the excep- 
 tion. 
 
 Would you have me be more particular as to 
 these island goddesses ? I meet them in the prom- 
 enade, dressed as queens and as gracious to all 
 as Minerva was toward Ulysses. I see them mov- 
 ing amidst the pine forests, their little high- 
 heeled white shoes hardly deigning to touch 
 the ground, the realization of Burke's picture of 
 Queen Antoinette ; for never lit upon this star 
 more resplendent visions of immortal beauty ! 
 
 It is impossible to particularize, although I have 
 one in my mind's eye, as I write. Is she Helen of 
 Troy, or Venus reincarnated ? When likening 
 these beauties of the isle to Homer's heroines, 
 I do not refer, to other than their bodily graces. 
 Venus is a goddess. She can take care of 
 herself. Helen is not an odious person. With all 
 her faults I love her still. She was not hateful 
 even to old Homer. /As I recall her she is frail but 
 not abandoned. She struggles with virtues on one 
 side, and a softness which overcomes them on the 
 other. Sometimes she is repentant, but always 
 fair. Fate seems to rescue her fame ; and fate is 
 never wanting when the "machina" is necessary 
 for the whirl of the Greek epic. There are places 
 in Homer where, as in his speaking horses and 
 
HELEN INCARNA TE. 
 
 his blood-distilling myrtles, even Pope confesses 
 that the machine would have been better than the 
 monstrosity. But Helen is sufficiently natural for 
 our daily contemplation, and far more alluring 
 than many of those who have passed as fashion- 
 able beauties. 
 
 If not Helen, then her typical sister is here 
 upon these isles of Greece. 
 
 I see her apparelled in pink satin, moving in 
 stateliness through the sylvan dells. Sometimes 
 she can be seen under a yellow or scarlet umbrella, 
 " serious as those intent on love," with her gay 
 cavalier, whose summer hat is adorned with a varie- 
 gated ribbon of a broad swath ! The scene is 
 Greek. Grecian graces pervade the isle despite 
 the mode. They fill the air with visual enchant- 
 ment and honeyed sounds. True, these graces 
 and Helens are dressed a la Parisienne or, re- 
 cently, on Viennese patterns, and even in Pera 
 fashion. But no toilet can conceal and no dress 
 enhance the glory of their beauty. 
 
 In several passages of the Iliad we have de- 
 scriptions of the Grecian ideal of the beautiful 
 woman. Powers, when he makes his Greek slave, 
 and Canova, his Venus, copy the statues of 
 Phidias or the effigy of that Helen who was 
 teterrima causa between Greek and Trojan. 
 
 In Book xiv. of the Iliad we have a poetic 
 picture of the dress of the Grecian woman 2500 
 
350 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 years ago. It was very simple. After the inevi- 
 table bath and the fragrant unguents Oriental cus- 
 toms she ties up the radiant tresses and casts a 
 white veil over her hair the original yashmak. 
 Then she has a mantle for her whole body 
 the feridjie. Then she hangs her pendants 
 and puts on her sandals. This was the dress 
 which the magic girdle of Venus enclosed when 
 Juno borrowed it to please the god of Olympus, 
 and in which many a Circassian beauty is arrayed 
 to please her pasha. It was the dress of goddess, 
 princess and lady, until its simplicity was corrupt- 
 ed by the later Asiatic fashions, which Isaiah de- 
 scribes in his third chapter. 
 
 But it is Helen's beauty that I take to be the 
 best standard of ancient Greece. Homer gives us 
 her portrait. He pictures her at the loom. All 
 his heroines are industrious and work golden webs. 
 But he does not give as full a catalogue of her 
 special beauties as we would like. Her mien is 
 majestic ; her graces are winning ; she moves a 
 goddess , she looks a queen ! She has the celes- 
 tial descent. Her charms make men fight nine 
 years on her account. But what is the color of 
 her eyes and hair ; how tall is she ? These questions 
 remain unanswered. Although the Greeks pre- 
 ferred the goddess of love to be golden-haired, and 
 worshipped Juno as blue-eyed, yet in general, 
 among the Greek females of our isle the blondes 
 
PIETY AND BEAUTY. 
 
 351 
 
 are exceptional. There are some among the 
 Turkish women whose mothers are doubtless Cir- 
 cassian blondes ; but then, their eyes are dark as 
 night, and wonderful as meteors.. Our Prinkipo 
 Helen is pure Greek. She affords opportunity 
 for the display of her charms and her wavy, grace- 
 ful figure. She does not conceal her form under 
 the ungainly feridjie, although sometimes, like 
 our Greek lady from Bourdour, in the picture, she 
 dresses elaborately. Besides, she is devout and 
 that helps her, as it does the Turkess. There is 
 no doubt of the fact, that the many kinds of prayers 
 and their frequency in the. Greek and Moslem cere- 
 monies tend to make the person willowy in grace 
 and facile in movement. These prayers are to be 
 executed with minute and easy exactness of limb 
 and motion. The Turks pray at least five times a 
 day. The Greeks make genuflections whenever 
 they pass a church or the image of a saint. I can- 
 not reckon from theological data how much move- 
 ment there is required in the. Greek ceremony, but 
 the Moslem demands twenty-six postures for each 
 prayer. The very devout use many courses of 
 eight postures each. Nine times eight is an excel- 
 lent number, which, with the concluding postures, 
 make seventy-four. Then there are special prayers 
 at certain seasons, which my informant enumerates 
 as follows : " for Ramazan, for the seven holy 
 nights ; for drought, famine, pestilence ; the funeral 
 26 
 
352 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 prayer, the battle prayer, the marriage prayer, and 
 many others, each of which must be executed in 
 its own way with the utmost particularity. The 
 slightest deviation or mistake destroys the merit of 
 the whole, and the performer I mean devotee 
 must begin anew." This constant genuflection 
 from early childhood makes the form lithe and the 
 vertebrae curve in lines of loveliness. No one ever 
 tires of meeting such courtesy as both Turkish 
 and Grecian people of both sexes bestow. Piety 
 and Beauty meet each other ; Goodness and Grace 
 kiss each other ! 
 
 I would not depreciate the women of other 
 climes, nor extol personal charms above mental 
 culture and virtuous merit. The Greek woman 
 may have at her tongue's end a dozen languages. 
 Her time at school has been so absorbed by them 
 that she has, perhaps, neglected to acquire other 
 information and discipline. She, however, be- 
 comes a wonder for sweetness of voice. Her 
 articulation runs the gamut as her ancestress 
 touched the lute. Much less would I make un- 
 due encomium upon the Turkish women, who are 
 greatly secluded from the world of letters, learn- 
 ing and social intercourse. Still it is true that 
 for physical grace the Greek beauty has no par- 
 allel but her own. The blondes of Boston, with 
 glasses before their acute orbs ; the brunettes of 
 Baltimore, with their easy flow of talk ; the girls 
 
THE GREEK PARAGON. 
 
 of Norseland, with their golden tresses and ceru- 
 lean eyes ; the senoritas of Seville whose beauty 
 made Byron beatific, all pale before the maidens 
 of Prinkipo, who as much excel his Maid of 
 Athens as she excelled the dowdy and gaudy 
 girls who figure in the novels of " Ouida." 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE TURKISH WOMEN A PRINCESS OF EGYPT 
 
 INDEED AN ESCAPADE. 
 
 BUT are there no Turkish ladies on your isle ? 
 Yes, my fair or stern reader, there have been 
 about fifty here this summer. Six reside immedi- 
 ately in the rear of our villa. Their house has 
 the sign of Turkish seclusion at its windows the 
 croisde. They walk out over the hills with the 
 children ; no man accompanies them. It is their 
 custom never to promenade with their husbands 
 or their male relatives. Their children are as 
 pretty as pictures. The women are yashmaked 
 in white tulle over head and face, and this group 
 has white feridjies. They look like a bevy of 
 Dante's ghosts, moving in the gloaming of the 
 evening, or sitting upon the hillside, as quiet 
 and mysterious as the dumb folk of Rip Van 
 Winkle's vision. This group is not so attractive ; 
 but there is another group who live by themselves 
 near the Calypso hotel. They are the wife, 
 daughter, and sister of a Bey, with their female 
 companions. They are veiled, but not much. 
 Sometimes I meet them unaccompanied by their 
 
 354 
 
TURKISH WOMAN. 
 
TURKISH BEAUTIES ON DONKEYS 
 
 355 
 
 Nubian eunuch, and when the veils are coquet- 
 tishly en abandon. They take donkey rides 
 around the isle, morning and evening. They 
 sit upon the animal with all the grace consist- 
 ent with their clumsy outer garment, the ferid- 
 jie. Their head-dresses shame the new-born 
 snow. Their feridjies are of all colors : one is 
 of golden yellow, one of royal purple, one of 
 white silk, and one is as blue as the Bosphorus. 
 The eldest has black silk. They wear the neatest 
 of French boots. 
 
 The other evening these ladies were mounted 
 and in a blithesome mood. The donkey-driver is a 
 Greek ; he, too, was frolicsome ; in fact, the keen 
 air of the isle gives to all jocund spirits. The 
 ladies were arbitrary ; and on their request the 
 driver pushed the animals up hill and down dale, 
 while the riders screamed and laughed like chil- 
 dren just out of school. One of the fair company 
 rode an obstinate donkey. She was left behind. 
 My Dalmatian serviteur, Pedro Skoppeglia, and 
 myself were on a rush behind them upon our don- 
 keys. May I not mention, sub rosa, that my wife 
 was not with us on this occasion ? The lady who 
 drops to the rear calls to the driver in vain. He is 
 occupied with the other three ladies. But we do the 
 work of punching up her donkey, and away she flies 
 like John Gilpin. We gallantly drop to the rear as 
 we approach the village. They draw rein until we 
 
356 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 turn down a street, when the belated one drops 
 her veil to bid me " Bon-soir" I, too, must drop 
 the veil. I said that my wife was not there. 
 Do you ask me, " Was she beautiful ?" She was of 
 Circassian mould and passing fair. She was the sis- 
 ter of the Bey. " Were the others beautiful ?" Yes, 
 of various types. The lady of the bon-soir was gold- 
 en-haired. She had dark melting eyes, eyebrows 
 of faultless arch and arch ways corresponding. 
 Her color was that of a sunset rose, creamy, tinged 
 with pink. The old song I heard in Damascus 
 came back to me with its refrain : " Beautiful was 
 the pomegranate ; but the wild bird sang to the 
 rose." She needed no such toilet as the Oriental 
 women of Isaiah's description. She sat upon her 
 animal like Helen if Helen may be supposed to 
 have ever sat upon a donkey, except metaphori- 
 cally. One must have recourse to Oriental meta- 
 phor and exaggeration to color her photograph. 
 Her shape, was it not as graceful as that of the 
 cypress? The shafts of her eyes beneath her 
 lashes were unsparing. Thus the poet of Persia 
 would sing of her : 
 
 "Oh! Queen Rose, thy slave is beggared; his 
 whole heart is only one wound. Smile but once 
 again and his head will touch the stars !" 
 
 I believe I mentioned that my wife was not 
 there. Besides, there is a certain reserve which 
 one in my relation to the American ensign had 
 
A NE W EASTERN Q UESTIQN. 
 
 to sustain upon the island. The best I could 
 do was to request my wife to make advances to 
 the fair Turquoises ! This she did through a 
 mutual friend, a Swiss lady of their acquaintance. 
 Then followed an invitation to a sail in the launch 
 around the isles, and a picnic al fresco in the 
 beautiful bay of Halki. Surely no Congressman 
 who voted for that launch and reads this chapter, 
 will regret such tender advances in the direction 
 of the haremlik by a prudent minister and dis- 
 creet husband. Yet yet, the wild bird will sing 
 to the rose. 
 
 Seriously, while these ladies understand French, 
 as do their relatives, the question arises : 
 
 What else do they know ? They do not attend 
 to the cooking in their homes. That is all done 
 for them, and generally out of their households. 
 Their slaves do all their home work, except em- 
 broidery, which Helen and Penelope and the rest 
 of the Homeric heroines performed as a ladylike 
 employment. There arises a new Eastern ques- 
 tion, and after all it is a question much moot- 
 ed among medical men, whether our fair sisters 
 should enter largely upon and join in the mental 
 toil and tournament of active life. Exceptional 
 culture on this isle has not, as has been contend- 
 ed, removed the " fittest " women, those physic- 
 ally perfect and most likely to add to the produc- 
 tion of generations of high-class brain-power, 
 
358 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 from out of the ranks of motherhood. The sweet 
 girl-graduates of Greek descent here whether 
 of raven or golden hair are in no danger of 
 losing their vital forces as, women by excessive 
 study of something beyond the languages and 
 graces ; for languages and graces seem to be drunk 
 in with their mothers ' milk. The Oriental woman, 
 says Flaubert, is hard to understand, as we are 
 not permitted to know her. But this is not the 
 case with the Greek, who never could assimilate 
 with the ultra-Oriental customs. After all, from my 
 observation here, I accept as true to life the de- 
 scription of a happy home life and wife as well de- 
 picted by an Oriental king, Solomon. He says : 
 
 " Who can find a virtuous woman ? for her 
 price is far above rubies. The heart of her 
 husband doth safely trust in her ; she will do 
 him good and not evil all the days of her life. 
 She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth 
 meat to .her household, and a portion to her 
 maidens. She girdeth her loins with strength 
 and strengtheneth her arms. She perceiveth that 
 her merchandise is good ; her candle goeth not 
 out by night. She layeth her hands to the spin- 
 dle, and her hands hold the distaff. She 
 stretcheth forth her hands to the poor; yea, she 
 reacheth forth her hands to the needy. Her 
 husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth 
 among the elders of the land. Strength and 
 
THE NATIONAL QUESTION. 
 
 359 
 
 honor are her clothing ; and she shall rejoice in 
 time to come. She openeth her mouth with 
 wisdom ; and in her tongue is the law of kindness. 
 She looketh well to the ways of her household, 
 and eateth not the bread of idleness. Her chil- 
 dren arise up and call her blessed ; her husband 
 also, and he praiseth her. Favor is deceitful, and 
 beauty is vain ; but a woman that feareth the 
 Lord, she shall be praised." 
 
 Has the curriculum in our female colleges been 
 productive of such ornaments of home as the Wise 
 King describes ? is the question yet to be decided. 
 
 The British Medical Association, through its 
 spokesman, Dr. Moore, epitomized one side of the 
 question, when it said: ''This higher education 
 will hinder those who would have been the best 
 mothers from being mothers at all ; or, if it does 
 not hinder them, more or less, it will spoil them, 
 and no training will enable themselves to do what 
 their sons might have done. Bacon's mother, intel- 
 lectual as she was, could not have produced the 
 ' Novum Organum ; ' but she, perhaps she alone, 
 could and did produce Bacon." 
 
 The other side of the question might well be 
 illustrated here, for in language dissenting /r0 hdc 
 from the Association, it may be truly urged 
 that where there is naturally good intellect 
 and a good physique, and where these are sus- 
 tained and improved by judicious feeding, exer- 
 
THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 cise, and employment, we should have no fear 
 of subjecting girls to any strain which the ordin- 
 ary forms of so-called higher education would in- 
 volve. We do not believe that either they or their 
 offspring would be in any respect the worse for it. 
 The question is a personal one ; and it is only on 
 personal qualities that it can be rightly decided. 
 
 It cannot be rightly decided by flippant flings 
 at the Ottoman women, nor at the time-honored 
 custom of " shamefacedness " in women which Paul 
 commended. The Greeks to whom the Gentile 
 apostle addressed his admonitions were not then, 
 and certainly were not in the time of the empire, 
 so pure that they could throw stones at their later 
 Turkish competitors for empire. " The Greek 
 emperor," said Gibbon, "demoralized, with his 
 uncurtained harem, the very Turk." 
 
 It is very seldom that a stranger, even if he 
 knows the Turkish language, and presumes to in- 
 terrogate, ever has occasion to receive a response 
 from a Turkish woman. I have read of one or 
 two instances, but perhaps these are travellers' 
 stories. In a volume written some forty years 
 ago, its author, the ubiquitous Mr. Smith, says, 
 that while he was in some distant province, mak- 
 ing a sketch of a Saracenic mosque, he was kindly 
 invited within by the Ulema. While engaged in 
 his sketching, several Turkish ladies passed by. 
 Curiosity getting the better of them, they turned 
 
TURKISH GOSSIP. 
 
 361 
 
 their wonderful eyes, first on the artist, and then 
 on his artistic performance, and inquired with al- 
 most American power of question, but with Orien- 
 tal poetical expression : 
 
 " Whence come you, O my soul ? Whither are 
 you going to travel ? Oh, Allah ! who taught you 
 to place upon paper what you see before you ? " 
 
 Was it possible that Turkish ladies should have 
 so transformed themselves in a moment by the 
 sight of an ensanguined Englishman as to have 
 rivalled our Yankee power of interrogation ? I 
 cannot believe it, nor that " the approach of some 
 great white turbans cut short the conversation, and 
 compelled the damsels to beat a retreat," 
 
 It is a frequent question, What have the Turk- 
 ish women to do when they, meet ? As far as I 
 could judge, in passing a group of them at the 
 Sweet Waters, I never saw them lacking in the 
 quality of loquacity. They have great powers of 
 conversation. " Loquunter Maria, Sibilla, et ab hoc, 
 et ab hac, et ab ilia." Instead of " Maria" insert 
 Zeuleika ; instead of "Sibilla" read Fatitna ; and 
 then let the hoc, hac, et ab ilia run at their pleasure. 
 
 It is always a source of astonishment to the stran- 
 ger in the streets of Constantinople or Pera that so 
 many ladies of the harem are seen driving around in 
 their broughams, and shopping without any attend- 
 ant, not even the Nubian. Their yashmaks have 
 become so thin that the police have had their at- 
 
362 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 tention called to them, yet without making much 
 reform in that particular. In private life a won- 
 derful change has been made in the costumes of 
 the Turkish women. % My wife has a couple of 
 dolls which illustrate the latest phase of Turkish 
 progress in this respect. The Turkish dress of 
 thirty years ago is almost obsolete. The Turkish 
 ladies like, where they have an opportunity, to talk 
 of the innovations that have been made in their 
 costumes and customs. 
 
 It cannot be true now, as it was four decades 
 ago, that the women of the harem, after the first 
 little offices of the Koran, pass the remainder of 
 the day in ennui. Some of their time must be 
 spent in dressing and changing their ornamenta- 
 tions. The bath is always handy, and in winter 
 season they no doubt nestle much under the cov- 
 ering of the tandour. But not now, in summer, 
 do they bury themselves among their cushions, 
 and thus in perpetual kef pass their time away 
 in the land of sleep and dreams. Habits of 
 industry have invaded the harem. Thus utter 
 idleness has ceased to be an attribute of the Turk- 
 ish female. 
 
 The sentiment which fills the Prankish be- 
 holder when he views the Oriental female is a per- 
 petual theme of laudation, as well in prose as in 
 poetry. The swan-like woman, " rubbed with 
 lucid oils," or the Asiatic eve, like the first rise of 
 
BEAUTIES UNVEILED. 
 
 363 
 
 moonlight, " large, dark and swimming in a 
 stream which seems to melt in its own beam,"- 
 these and other fervid pictures show how poetic 
 sensibility has endeavored to wreak its observa- 
 tion and feelings upon expression ! 
 
 When Theodore Gautier visited Constantinople 
 he did what many tourists undertake : he described 
 some of the unveiled beauties of the harem, and 
 made some delineation and coloring of its inmates. 
 After some conscientious misgivings, he indites 
 this paragraph : 
 
 " ' But how do you know this?' the reader is 
 about to say, no doubt, scenting some gallant ad- 
 venture that I have failed to recount. But my 
 knowledge," said he, " has been attained in a man- 
 ner the least Don Juanish in the world. In wan- 
 dering in the cemeteries, it has frequently hap- 
 pened to me to surprise involuntarily, some lady 
 adjusting her yashmak, or having left it open 
 on account of the heat, trusting for security to the 
 solitude of the place. That is the whole story." 
 
 Such an experience is not unusual to those who 
 sojourn in the East. It has often been my fortune, 
 or misfortune, to come unexpectedly upon some of 
 these beauties of the harem when aloof from their 
 eunuch or other guardian. Those on our isles 
 are fond of labyrinthine rock rambles. I often 
 came upon them in covies of a half-dozen in the 
 sweet nooks and shades of the woods. It always 
 
3 6 4 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 struck me as strange that they should have so 
 much care for their faces when they did not seem 
 to be otherwise fastidious. 
 
 My experience, however, in the harem has been 
 limited. The adventure which I will now narrate 
 is a little beyond the limitation. When visiting 
 Constantinople some six years ago, and while stop- 
 ping with our consul at Therapia, certain Turkish 
 ladies made a call at the consulate. One of them 
 was an Egyptian princess. She was a cousin of 
 the Khedive, and a grand-daughter of Mehemet 
 Ali, the great Albanian soldier of Egypt. I hap- 
 pened to take a cup of tea with her, and this, to be 
 mutual, required that she should drop her veil just 
 a little. She was widowed, and lived at that time 
 with her mother in one of the palaces on the Bos- 
 phorus. I need not say that she was beautiful and 
 accomplished Ayesha, the favored wife of the 
 prophet was not more so. "Her eyes were bril- 
 liant, and yet human, like the reflection of stars in 
 a well." 
 
 When we were visiting Egypt, in February, 
 1886, I received a note from the princess to call at 
 her palace. She desired to prefer a request of the 
 Sultan, whom she knew to be my friend. The re- 
 quest had reference to some diamonds. They had 
 been mortgaged by her husband, and she desired 
 to recover them. This request had a touch of ro- 
 mance about it. I ventured, in company with the 
 
VISIT TO A HAREM. ^fa 
 
 vice-consul, to make the call. Her palace is quite 
 after the manner of the haremlik, which I had 
 frequently seen when the birds were flown. 
 When I enter it I find the inevitable colored 
 eunuch. He dismisses the consul and solemnly 
 directs my steps up the winding staircase, at 
 the same time using the most singular sound, 
 not pronounceable, or translatable into type, 
 by which to warn all the females of the house- 
 hold of the approach of a man and a Giaour. 
 I surmount the stairs with much timidity. The 
 number of heads which pop out of the doors 
 of the various landings, and which are with- 
 drawn with sudden surprise, astonishes me. 
 At last I reach the apartment of the princess. 
 There I find her seated upon an ottoman. After 
 making the salutations and rnany inquiries, and a 
 statement of the business, we smoke our cigar- 
 ettes together, and drink our tea. We talk of 
 palms and palmistry, of Egypt and England, of 
 Arnold's " Light of Asia," and American petroleum, 
 of the beauties of the Bosphorus and the navi- 
 gation of the Nile. After this interview I am 
 escorted by the same colored gentleman, amid 
 the same indescribable noises, down the winding 
 stairway to the door. On the way down, one of 
 his sable highness's ejaculations scares one of 
 the resident young ladies. Not being aware 
 of my proximity, she is ascending the stairs. 
 
3 66 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 At the terrible sound she rushes for the banis- 
 ters. She attempts a speedy covering of her head. 
 She is embarrassed. So am I. I, too, rush for the 
 banisters, for support, and thus we meet. There 
 is no screen, and no scene ; but there is a hasty 
 parting, all too hasty ; while the eunuch gives out 
 another tremendous sound, as if all the Indians of 
 the " Wild West " were incarnate and vociferous in 
 his person. I reach the sweet and balmy atmos- 
 phere of Cairo, with considerable perspiration. 
 This is my wildest adventure in a harem. 
 
 It so happened, during the past summer, that 
 this fair princess desired to pay some Moslem 
 rites upon the grave of her mother, who died 
 the summer before upon the Bosphorus. She 
 came to Constantinople. Her physicians or- 
 dered her to Prinkipo. There she took a house 
 near ours. As in duty bound, I make my 
 devoirs. My wife invites her to ride, in our 
 launch, amid the isles of our beautiful little ar- 
 chipelago. Without much reflection, I procure 
 a carriage, drive to the villa of the princess, 
 and tap the knocker. Her man-servant comes 
 to the door, and soon she appears, radiant in 
 all the beauty of her white tulle yashmak, 
 and as stately as became one of the line of Me- 
 hemet Ali. I assist her into the carriage. She 
 sits by the side of my wife and they make the 
 vivacious French incandescent with their talk. We 
 
THE PRINCESS AND THE MINISTER. 
 
 367 
 
 drive to the scala, where the flag and the l-aunch 
 await us. Unfortunately, at this time, one of the 
 ferries from Constantinople comes in and lands 
 about a thousand passengers. They see the Gia- 
 our, with a stove-pipe hat. He is gallanting a 
 Mahometan lady. The rumor reaches the Kaima- 
 kam, or governor of the island. We return to the 
 scala after our sail among the islands. We drive 
 her to her home in the carriage which is waiting. 
 What is the result ? Before I take the boat that 
 day for Constantinople, my driver, horses and car- 
 riage are arrested by order of the Kaimakam ! 
 
 This is, indeed, an adventure not provided for 
 by any instructions from the State Department. 
 At once I send a remonstrance to the Kaimakam, 
 against the arrest of one in the employ of the 
 American minister. It is couched in unabridged 
 terms, such as are embraced in the word inter- 
 territoriality. 
 
 It is needless to say that this proceeding 
 reached the prefect in the city, and I fear the 
 Sultan and the palace also. There had been an 
 apparent infraction of the Turkish law which 
 forbids a Mahometan woman, unless of princely 
 rank, to be seen upon the street with any man, 
 and more especially a Christian. The plug-hat 
 made a prima facie case. However, the matter 
 was decorously settled, as it should have been ; for 
 the Kaimakam had exceeded his authority. It 
 was a matter outside of his jurisdiction. His con- 
 
368 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 duct was arbitrary. He had no warrant or process 
 for the seizure of the horses, the driver, or carriage. 
 If there had not been an Oriental princess in the 
 case, who exhibited some sensibility in relation 
 to her royal independency, which perhaps she 
 had overstepped, the matter might have figured 
 in our diplomatic correspondence. As it was, the 
 affair was properly settled without a pursuit of 
 the governor. My impression is that he did not 
 know the quality of the lady, nor the capacity of 
 the minister. I had occasion to remedy at the 
 palace any seeming mischief which might have been 
 done. The princess left us the next day, which 
 was the beginning of Bairam, in order to sacrifice 
 a sheep upon the grave of her mother. She was 
 a devout Moslem, as well as a most charming and 
 intelligent woman. 
 
 I am sorry to undignify the Kalmakam of the 
 Princes Islands, who produced so much trouble in 
 this romance of the princess. Since I left the 
 island he has become an ex-Kai'makam. This 
 means an unknown quantity not only in algebra, 
 but in politics. He was removed from office. He 
 had been unmindful of the relation of meum et 
 tuum. He overdrew his salary, by more than a 
 thousand dollars, an act without legality on his 
 part, or satisfaction on the other part. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 FAREWELL TO PRINKIPO AND ITS PLEASURES. 
 
 EARLY in the fall (1886), we commence prepar- 
 ations to leave our home at Prinkipo. These 
 preparations look beyond Constantinople. Be- 
 fore they began the President had kindly ex- 
 tended his permission that I should return to 
 America. In fact, I had intimated to him that 
 it would be agreeable to me to resign my office, 
 as nearly everything possible to be done to 
 place it in running order had been accomplished. 
 Through the favor of the Sultan, and the partial- 
 ity of Said Pasha, his accomplished minister of 
 foreign affairs, and with the intelligent assistance 
 and counsel of Mr. Garguilo, the dragoman of 
 the legation, I had so far pursued my instructions 
 from the Department of State as to complete two 
 treaties which had been suspended during nearly 
 a dozen years. The first involved extradition, 
 and the next the question of expatriation and 
 naturalization. 
 
 The American reader will be pleased to know 
 that the business of the legation at Constanti- 
 nople by no means gives the leisurely and slip- 
 24 369 
 
3/o 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 pered ease which might be inferred from a perusal 
 of these pages. There is no time in which some- 
 thing may not be done to forward the interests of 
 the American people, and especially of the teach- 
 ers, preachers and printers who are, through 
 American benevolence and means, permeating 
 and smoothing down the ancient ways of the 
 Orient. But, whether encouraging this work, or 
 keeping up with the current events of American 
 newspapers, or watching the operation of the 
 Turkish life-saving service ; or whether riding 
 around the suburbs of Constantinople and trying 
 experiments in ploughing, as an amateur farmer, 
 whereby I have sometimes relieved the tedium of 
 absence ; or whether making an excursion to 
 Egypt, and its temples, tombs and other historic 
 lineaments ; or whether upon the Acropolis observ- 
 ing the new developments of archaic statuary as 
 photographed by the modern artist ; or whether 
 bounding by day and night upon the ygean, un- 
 der the terrific impulses of an equinoctial tempest, 
 
 I have found enough leisure in my active life in 
 the Orient for some of that sedate and quiet re- 
 pose which so many believe is the only occupation 
 of an American minister at the Sublime Porte. 
 
 Having thus successfully accomplished my mis- 
 sion here, all this delightful wintering and sum- 
 mering amid these resorts of historic grandeur, 
 
 and at this theatre of diplomatic contention, are 
 
ADIEU TO PKINKIPO. 371 
 
 easily relinquished for the gratification of home 
 tastes and predilections. After much considera- 
 tion, and many lingering farewells in my heart be- 
 fore they were spoken in the word, my mind is 
 made up. It is now the animo revertendi. Not 
 the least difficult to sever among the attachments 
 which I have formed in the Orient is that for this 
 paradise of Prinkipo. But the soughing of the 
 wind presages the autumn ; and the dropping of 
 the leaf upon the mosaic pavement of our garden, 
 and the brown tinge of the foliage, make our with- 
 drawal from the pleasures and precincts of this 
 Eden of the East less regretful than it would be 
 in the vernal season. 
 
 Not unfrequently there were some lively 
 breezes upon the Marmora. The south wind 
 always brought its waves, and though the little 
 launch was capable of mastering them, it was not 
 so comfortable, especially for the ladies, to be on 
 board during these emergencies. More than once, 
 when we started from the bridge in Constantino- 
 ple, the seeming calm of the sea was disturbed 
 and the waves dashed over the sides of the vessel. 
 On such occasions, we had to run behind the 
 island of Halki for shelter. As the launch was 
 often decorated with flowers, and especially the 
 hydrangea, it presented quite a gay appearance 
 with the red cushions for the seats and the rugs 
 for the floor. But when the waves were rough, 
 
3^2 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 these flowers looked as if they had been on a 
 spree, and returned to the garden considerably 
 demoralized. 
 
 We selected a calm time and a good photog- 
 rapher for our farewell view of the scenery of 
 the islands. Nature never gave to mortal man a 
 more beautiful day, a more serene sea, a more 
 azure sky, or more balmy air for a last visit to 
 loved and familiar scenes and associations. As I 
 look about me, preparatory to this journey on the 
 launch, I feel that nature gives to the weary eye 
 under such a sky and amidst such scenes, a balm 
 that does not come even from sleep in a less 
 favored climate. Here is the very home of the 
 Kef, of dreamful repose in a sunny sheen bathed 
 with the mildest airs. The landscape changes its 
 mood with every vista of observation. The sea 
 copies the land in its coquettish phases. Soft are 
 the midday sighings amidst the bosquet of the 
 pines. On the placid shores the waves forget 
 even to make their drowsy melody. No fountains 
 play on the terraces ; no purling streams gurgle on 
 their way to the sea ; no torrents bound from the 
 mountain steeps ; no sound is heard except the 
 faint chants in the churches and the monasteries, as 
 they float by in waves of softest melody. Here is 
 blissful rest ! Looking through the avenues of 
 the trees, down upon the waters of the Propontis, 
 I see the distant sails becalmed, with here and 
 
PHOTOGRAPHING THE ISLES. 
 
 373 
 
 there streaks of smoke from the funnels of the 
 great steamers bound for the Dardanelles, or the 
 little boats, looking ever so small, carrying the 
 mail to Modena or Ismid. Is there any motion 
 on the surface of the sea ? No. Look again ! 
 Is it the shimmer of the sun on the blue surface ? 
 No ! it is a breeze so mild that the nautilus 
 of the Southern seas might safely spread its 
 tiny sail. 
 
 Fanned by this gentle breeze, we begin our 
 farewell photographic trip. Our first course is to 
 the front of the town of Prinkipo, with its craggy 
 heights and superb buildings and its inlets and 
 shadows. These our photograph speedily cap- 
 tures. Then turning around a rocky point, -upon 
 which sits as a miracle of beauty a little domes- 
 tic temple, we anchor our vessel and bid " all 
 hail !" to the fishermen hauling in their nets from 
 the rickety platform. They are acquiescent and 
 submissive, these fisherman, and give themselves 
 to the lens of the photographer without effort 
 to escape. After a feeble attempt to take them 
 all, while they are manning the ropes and bringing 
 their burden of fish to the pebbly shore, a wild, 
 strange being presents himself upon the long plat- 
 form of the pier! His advent is greeted with a 
 roar of laughter from the fishermen. He is saluted 
 by his name, which is none other than Demetrius. 
 He is not of the ecclesiastical kind. But he is of 
 
374 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 the orthodox race, and thoroughly Grecian. He 
 carries a basket in which he has been gathering 
 some provender among the islanders. He has a 
 rough cap upon his shaggy, curly black hair ; and a 
 coat and pair of shoes which no beggar on the 
 bridge at Stamboul would envy. Pedro, our Dal- 
 matian servant, and George, the sailor of the 
 launch, surround him. They press him along to 
 the conspicuous front of the picture. He is 
 taken, in much better company than he is ac- 
 customed to, As soon as his picture is finish- 
 ed and his recompense paid, some of the villagers 
 who have gathered upon the shore pick him up 
 bodily and pitch him into the sea. 
 
 Of' course this was a very rude proceeding. 
 On my remonstrance, the villagers expressed re- 
 gret. They said that they had often done the 
 same thing to him before; that he could swim 
 like a duck, and that, like a cork, he was light in 
 the head and therefore not properly the sub- 
 ject of homicide by drowning. He does not 
 drown. He soon swims out and clambers up the 
 pier. He makes no protest. He likes his duck- 
 ing ; for does it not bring him reward ? I am 
 free to sav that never have I seen in the Orient 
 
 * 
 
 a man who, before his involuntary douche, needed 
 washing more than did Demetrius. 
 
 The English engineer who leased our launch to 
 the government for the use of our legation, lives 
 
FAREWELL OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 375 
 
 on the western shore of Prinkipo, upon a perpendic- 
 ular cliff overlooking a deep and delightful shady 
 cove. Upon the rocks which form the cove a 
 summer house is placed with exquisite grace. It 
 is the house of my friend Jones, the lessor of the 
 launch. He is not at home to give us our fare- 
 well, but his family come upon the cliff, and along 
 with the villagers they look wonderingly at our 
 photographic operations. It is a pretty point of 
 observation for a picture. The dim islands of 
 Oxia and Plati are in the hazy distance. Halki, 
 with her red rocks, is but a mile away. Above 
 its minarets and Turkish naval school and its 
 long yellow buildings we discern with a glass the 
 lazy inhabitants curiously observing our perform- 
 ance, while a winged catgue, and three Greek 
 priests in a boat, pass by. They shake their 
 heads solemnly at the damp, unpleasant body of 
 Demetrius, who stands a most pitiable and limp 
 object upon the pier. Along the road upon the 
 shore we perceive carriages and donkey parties. 
 They seem to be floating along in a mirage of 
 sunlight. We hear the tinkle of the bells on the 
 water donkeys. 
 
 We do not linger long at this our favorite spot. 
 We put off from the shore. We stop the launch 
 in the open sea near Prinkipo so as to make its 
 picture and that of the island of Halki whither 
 we soon shall sail. We are intent on seeing once 
 
376 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 more the beautiful bay upon the eastern side of 
 Halki. 
 
 The landlord of the restaurant, or Diaskalon, 
 sends his boat to us as soon as we anchor in the bay. 
 He greets us upon his shore, loads my wife fairly 
 down with flowers from his abundant garden ; 
 and after many compliments to America, and a 
 bottle* of wine, a cup of coffee and a smoke, we 
 are about to return when the insatiable pho- 
 tographer assails the landlord and his company. 
 He takes the whole group, amidst surrounding 
 foliage, in which every prospect pleases, and the 
 very sun, as well as our host, seems to smile. 
 
 Our intention had been once more to visit Oxia 
 and Plati, so as to take a view of the palaces of 
 Bulwer and some of the beautiful scenes upon those 
 rocky islets. But by this time the breeze fresh- 
 ens and we are content to fire at long range at 
 these singularly romantic spots. On returning 
 to our home we stop before the monastery and 
 church of St George upon the rocky promontory 
 of Halki. The long avenues of cypresses which 
 lead up to it are reduced pictorially in a twink- 
 ling, by the refinement of art. The prettiest 
 part of this church is on the outside; although 
 it has recently been renovated and glorified by 
 new pictures and adornments from Russian 
 co-religionists. Most of these churches, for rea- 
 sons already hinted, are not attractive. These 
 
GREEK AND RUSSIAN CHURCHES. 
 
 377 
 
 old and stained churches within the Turkish 
 dominion, which are so rigidly orthodox, are in 
 great contrast with the temples and basilicas of 
 which Moscow and St. Petersburg furnish the 
 best examples. The new Temple of the Saviour 
 at the former, and St. Isaac's at the latter place, 
 have no equal for the splendor of their pictured 
 adornments, the gracefulness of their architecture, 
 their innumerable lighted tapers, their gorgeous 
 vestments, their rare and original music, and for 
 that wonderful mystery of the gilded iconostos. 
 or altar screens, heavy with masses of metal and 
 jewels and the pictures of saints. The choirs in 
 the cathedrals of Russia are conducted with ex- 
 traordinary precision and harmony. In this har- 
 mony there is no organ or other instrumental 
 music. 
 
 We return to Prinkipo. In the afternoon 
 we make a detour of the island. This is done 
 with the purpose of photographing one souvenir 
 from the spot where the Imperial palace of the 
 Empress Irene once glorified the earth. It is 
 now only a hole in the mountain. But we fill it 
 with solid objects of historic interest. What the 
 sunless treasures of this Imperial palace were 
 will never be known, especially as the treas- 
 urer had not been heard to audit the catalogues. 
 But we find memories outside of this vacancy. 
 They are Homeric and Hellenic. Stretched on 
 
37 
 
 HE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 the shelly shore are some idlers, while others 
 "whirl the disk," if they do not dart the javelin. 
 We meet our Albanian guide and his dogs. He 
 is embroidered as if for a gala time. Indeed I no- 
 tice that carriages are on the road to a grove near 
 St. Michael's church, where there is a table spread. 
 It is covered with dainties, fruits, wines and meats 
 for a hundred people. The place is very select for 
 such an entertainment. It is a church/?/V. The 
 breakers on the east shore of the isle begin, with the 
 creamy, dry Sillery of their crests, to anticipate the 
 feast ; and on the west side there is what Byron 
 called the " Sunset glow of Burgundy." Children 
 play about in the fragrant bushes. But not a word 
 awakes those historic people who once revelled 
 here and whose dust is not even folded in tombs. 
 
 On our return to our villa in the evening, we 
 find " Far-Away Moses." He is purchasing much 
 bric-a-brac and material for us to export to our 
 home. Mark Twain has made him immortal, in 
 his " Innocents Abroad." But our photograph 
 gives to this remarkable Israelite a pictorial cos- 
 tume which is a sample of the best appearance 
 which a Hebrew may make in Turkey ! 
 
 This almost closes our album. Last, though 
 not least, come our own household. They are 
 all present for the picture which we desire, in- 
 cluding even our old " Amty," the cook. Pedro 
 Stands prominently upon a pedestal like the 
 
" FAR AWAY MOSES. 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD PHOTOGRAPHED. 
 
 Dalmatian hero of many an incident of the classic 
 Olympus or of his Croatian home. Our gardener 
 is not on hand, except by deputy. Xenophon on 
 this occasion is represented by Epaminondas. 
 My wife's little Armenian maid stands upon the 
 steps beneath " old Amty," who has the emblem 
 of her vocation, a ladle, in her left hand. But a 
 better picture is taken of the family group out- 
 side the grilled gate of the villa. Pedro is there 
 mounted upon a horse, as if he were the Don 
 Quixote of our expedition, while the minister, 
 like Sancho Panza, upon a donkey, modestly 
 turns his back to the instrument. An English 
 helmet temporarily destroys something of the 
 nationality of the minister. But our photo- 
 graphic mania does not end until our two female 
 servants of the household are caught as it were 
 in masquerade ; the maid Marie being dressed as 
 a Turkish lady, and Theano in the present Greek 
 costume of her class in the island. Here "night's 
 descending shadow " hides the view, and we close 
 the camera. 
 
 A few weeks more and the summer will be 
 ended. Its luxury of flowers and leaves and the 
 bright blue of the skies and the brighter blue 
 of the seas around our islands will have passed 
 away. The green of the woods will soon turn 
 to russet and gold, at the touch of the frosty 
 autumn. All the endearments of this wonderful 
 
380 
 
 THE PRINCES ISLES. 
 
 and beauteous land will soon pass into the realm 
 of memory. Even the freshness of the " Sweet 
 Waters " will pass away ; the dark green ceme- 
 teries, the monuments and columns, the hippo- 
 drome, the mosques and minarets, the fountains, 
 and the chosen haunts with which we are fa- 
 miliar, these will pass away with their enchant- 
 ments, associations and attachments, but never 
 shall the blissful days of these isles of "eternal 
 summer " pass from our fond recollection. They 
 will remain among the bright oases of our life. 
 
 A few more days we linger at our lovely home. 
 We make our adieux to neighbors and friends 
 upon the island and do the necessary packing for 
 our long journey. Better to leave it now in 
 the cool beauty of its refreshing haunts, than 
 later, when November brings its mist and chill, to 
 make the solitude, which is so pleasing, lonesome 
 to a sense of pain. 
 
 What will the groves be, when winter rules and 
 makes this clime less clement ? We do not desire 
 the solitude of dearth or death ; but rather that of 
 the hill and valley, where " the harvest of a quiet 
 eye " may brood and sleep in our own heart. We 
 do not desire to see the mansions here, so lately 
 filled with music and jocund with domestic joys, and 
 the gardens so full of pleasance and fragrance, 
 deserted of both flowers and houris. We do not 
 wish to wait until, the clouds, which are now 
 
MEMORIES OF AN ETERNAL SUMMER. ^1 
 
 white as wool and rolling in light masses, over 
 the hills of Asia, become black with storm and 
 thunder. 
 
 The ways here are sufficiently untrodden now, 
 but what will they be when even the donkey-boys 
 cease to accelerate the tourist, and the peddlers 
 have gone South with the birds, to the isles of 
 the Grecian archipelago ? The privacy of the 
 pine forests, the brown of the vineyards, the si- 
 lence of the warblers, and, above all, the cessation 
 of the crowds of people who come here for recre- 
 ation, will make Prinkipo and "the Princes," en- 
 chanting though they are, too secluded for a 
 diplomat or a tourist. 
 
 The story of our summer is told. The wreaths 
 begin to wither on the tomb. A thousand 
 thoughts and studies hang over them. But these 
 are not dead garlands. The Angels of Memory 
 will resume their places at the gate of this para- 
 dise. The flaming sword drives us into the old 
 and busy world, under the glaring sun and the 
 uncloistered heat and dust of our earnest and 
 active American life; but amidst all the turmoil 
 and worry of that life, we shall turn to the " Pleas- 
 ures of Prinkipo " ; 
 
 " In the shadow of thy pines, by the shores of thy sea, 
 On the hills of thy beauty, our heart is with thee." 
 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 THE TRAVELLERS' SERIES. 
 
 SKETCHES OF PEOPLE AND PLACES. 
 i6mo, paper, per volume, 50 cts. 
 
 1 THE GREAT FUR LAND; or, SKETCHES OF LIFE IN THE HUD- 
 
 SON BAY TERRITORY. By H. M. ROBINSON. With numerous illus- 
 trations from designs by CHARLES GASCHE. 
 
 " Mr. Robinson's narratives exhibit a freshness and glow of delineation founded on 
 a certain novelty of adventure which commands the attention of the reader and makes his 
 story as attractive as a romance." N. I". Tribune. 
 
 2 ITALIAN RAMBLES. By JAMES JACKSON JARVES, author of " The 
 
 Art Ideal," " Italian Sights," etc. 
 
 " Picturesque and vivid descriptions of people and places in out-of-the-way nooks in 
 Italy. Mr. Jarves possesses not only literary skill, but a thorough knowledge, based on a 
 sojourn of a quarter of century, of the country of which he writes." Chicago Times. 
 
 3 STUDIES OF PARIS. By EDMONDO DE AMICIS, author of " Con- 
 
 stantinople," " Holland and Its People," " Spain and the Span- 
 iards," etc. 
 
 " De Amicis has comprehended the manifold amazement, the potent charm of Paris 
 as no writer before him has done." Press, Portland. 
 
 4 THE ABODE OF SNOW. Observations of a tour from Chinese 
 
 Thibet to the valleys of the Himalayas. By ANDREW WILSON. 
 
 8vo, with map. 
 
 " Worthy of the highest praise. There is not a page in the handsome volume of 
 nearly 500 pages which will not repay perusal. * * * He describes all he meets with 
 on his way with inimitable spirit." London Athenecum. 
 
 5 A LADY'S LIFE IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. By ISA- 
 
 BELLA BIRD, author of " Six Months in the Sandwich Islands," " Un- 
 beaten Tracks in Japan," etc. 
 u Miss Bird is an ideal writer. * * * She has regard to the essentials of a scene 
 
 or episode, and describes these with a simplicity that is as effective as it is artless." 
 
 London Spectator. 
 
 6 TENT LIFE IN SIBERIA, AND ADVENTURES AMONG 
 
 THE KORAKS AND OTHER TRIBES IN KAM- 
 TCHATKA AND NORTHERN ASIA. By GEORGE KEN- 
 NAN. Seventh edition. 
 
 The London Atkeneeuin says: "We strongly recommend this book as one of the 
 most entertaining volumes of travel that have appeared for some years." 
 
 The London Spectator says it is " racy, clear, full of humor, and full of interest." 
 
G. P.- PUTNAM'S SONS" PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 7 BY-WAYS OF NATURE AND LIFE. By CLARENCE DEMING. 
 
 A series of essays covering a wide variety of topics. 
 
 " These letters are characterized by all the grace, elegance, and feeling which made 
 Matthew Arnold name Newman as the first of living writers of English prose." Critic. 
 " Fresh, vigorous, and always interesting." Westminster Re~>ieiu. 
 
 8 CUBAN SKETCHES. By JAMES W. STEELE. 
 
 " The book gives a well-written tale of topics which are of interest both to tourists 
 and to those who enjoy travelling at their own firesides." Christian Register. 
 
 " Well-written, vivacious, and realistic pictures." 
 
 " One of the brightest and cleverest of the many books which have been written 
 about Cuba." Boston Transcript. 
 
 9 UP THE RHINE. By THOS. HOOD. With two steel engravings, 
 
 and with the author's original illustrations on wood. 
 
 10 WHIMS AND ODDITIES. By THOS. HOOD. Illustrated. 
 
 11 CANOEING IN KANUCKIA. The Haps and Mishaps on Sea 
 and Shore of the Statesman, the Editor, the Artist, and the Scribbler. 
 By C. L. NORTON and JOHN HABBERTON. Very fully illustrated. 
 Second edition, with supplementary chapter, being details of canoes 
 constructed down to 1886. 
 
 " A more enjoyable book cannot well be imagined. It makes one think of summer, 
 of rest, of recreation, of unpremeditated and unrestricted fun." Albany Argus. 
 
 12 PICTURES AND LEGENDS FROM NORMANDY AND 
 BRITTANY. By KATHERINE S. and THOMAS MACQUOID. With 
 thirty-four illustrations. 
 
 The well-known author of " Patty " has interwoven with some fascinating narratives 
 of travel a selection of Norman and Breton stories and legends which are very quaint and 
 characteristic, and her husband and fellow-traveller has contributed a series of charming 
 pencil sketches of the scenery and the people. 
 
 13 THE GREEKS OF TO-DAY. By Hon. CHARLES K. TUCK- 
 ERMAN, late Minister Resident of the United States at Athens. Third 
 edition. 
 
 " No one can read this book without having his interest greatly increased in this 
 brave, brilliant, and in every way remarkable people." N. Y. Times. 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, Publishers, 
 
 NEW YORK: LONDON: 
 
 27 and 29 West 23d Street. 27 King William St., Strand. 
 

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