CHAPTER XVIII. THERA
No island that we visited in our Ægean cruise was more interesting than Thera proved to be, when we had steamed across the intervening ocean from Rhodes and into the immense basin that serves Thera—or modern Santorin—for a harbor. No more remarkable harbor could well be conceived.
If Vesuvius could be imagined to sink into Naples bay until there were left protruding only about a thousand feet of the present altitude; if the ocean should be admitted to the interior of the volcano by two great channels or fissures in the sides—one at the point where the ubiquitous Mr. Cook has—or did have—his funicular railway, and the other in the general locality represented by the ill-starred Bosco Trecase; and if the present awesome crater, into which so many thousand visitors have peered, should thus be filled throughout its extent by the cooling waters, so as to form a great and placid bay within the mountain,—then we should have an almost exact reproduction of what happened at Thera something like four thousand years ago. Furthermore, if we may add to our Vesuvian hypothesis the supposition that there be built along the eastern lip of the crater a long white town, stretching for perhaps a mile along the sharp spine of the summit, we should have an equally exact reproduction of what exists at Thera to-day.
Thera lies at the end of the chain of submerged peaks that reveal the continuation of the Attic peninsula under the waters of the Ægean. The same rocky range of mountains that disappears into the sea at Sunium rises again and again as it stretches off to the southeast to form the islands of Cythnos, Seriphos, Siphnos, and their fellows, and the series closes, apparently, in the volcanic island of Santorin, under which name the moderns know the island which the ancients called successively Kallista (most beautiful) and Thera. Considering her beauty as an island and her comparative nearness to the mainland of Greece or to Crete, Thera is surprisingly little known. Historically Thera had small celebrity compared with her neighbors; but in every other way it seemed to us that she surpassed them all. Legend appears to have left the island comparatively unhonored, and poetry has permitted her to remain unsung. No Byron has filled high his bowl with Theran wine. No burning poetess lived or sang in her single tortuous street. No god of Olympus claimed the isle for his birthright. But for beauty of every kind, from the pastoral to the sublimely awful, Thera has no fellow in the Ægean; and for extraordinary natural history and characteristics, it is doubtful if it has a fellow in the world. For it is a sunken volcano, with a bottomless harbor, where once was the centre of fiery activity,—a harbor, rimmed about with miles of encircling precipices, on the top of one of which lies the town of Thera, a thousand feet straight up above the sea, and reachable only by a steep and winding mule track which connects it with the diminutive landing stage below.
Santorin
There appears to be a wide divergence of opinion as to the exact date when the original mountain was blown to pieces and sunk in the ocean, but it may be roughly stated to have occurred in the vicinity of the sixteenth century before Christ, although some authorities incline to believe the eruption to have come to pass at a still earlier period. As to the inhabitants before the time of that extraordinary upheaval, little is known save what may be gleaned from a multitude of pottery vases left behind by those early settlers, and bearing ornamentation of a rude sort that stamps them as belonging to the remote pre-Mycenæan age, the age that preceded the greatness of Agamemnon’s city and the sack of Troy. It seems entirely probable that the early Therans were from Phœnicia, and tradition says that they came over under the leadership of no less a personage than Cadmus himself. What we know for a certainty, however, is that at some prehistoric time the original volcano underwent a most remarkable change and subsided, with a blaze of glory that can hardly be imagined, into the waters of the Ægean, until only the upper rim and three central cones are now to be seen above the water’s edge. Through two enormous crevices torn in the northern and southern slopes the irresistible ocean poured into the vast central cavity, cooling to a large extent the fiery ardor of the mountain and leaving it as we found it, a circle of frowning cliffs, nearly a thousand feet in height and something like eighteen miles in periphery, inclosing a placid and practically bottomless harbor in what was once the volcano’s heart, the surface of the bay pierced by only three diminutive islands, once the cones of the volcano, and not entirely inert even to-day. In fact one of these central islands appeared as recently as 1866 during an eruption that showed the fires of Santorin not yet to be extinguished by any means—a fact that is further testified to by the heat of certain portions of the inclosed waters of the basin.
LANDING-PLACE AT THERA
Into this curious harbor our little chartered ship glided in the early light of an April morning, which dimly revealed the walls of forbidding stone towering high above in cliffs of that black, scarred appearance peculiar to volcanic formation, marred by the ravages of the ancient fires, yet none the less relieved from utter sullenness here and there by strata of rich red stone or by patches of grayish white tufa. Nevertheless it was all sombre and forbidding, especially in the early twilight; for the sun had not yet risen above the horizon, much less penetrated into the cavernous depths of Thera’s harbor. High above, however, perched on what looked like a most precarious position along the summit of the cliff, ran the white line of the city, already catching the morning light on its domes and towers, but seeming rather a Lilliputian village than a habitation of men; while far away to the north, on another portion of the crater wall, a smaller city seemed rather a lining of frost or snow gathered on the crater’s lip.
A few shallops made shift to anchor close to the foot of the precipice, where a narrow submarine shelf projects sufficiently to give a precarious holding ground for small craft; and near them were grouped a few white buildings showing duskily in the morning half-light and serving to indicate the landing stage. In the main, however, there is little anchorage in the entire bay, which is practically bottomless. No cable could fathom the depth of the basin a few rods off shore, and fortunately none is needed, since the shelter is perfect. The steamer held her own for hours by a mere occasional lazy turning of her screw. To the southward lay the broad channel through which our ship had entered, and to the north lay the narrow passage through which at nightfall we proposed to depart for Athens. Everywhere else was the encircling wall of strangely variegated rock, buttressed here and there by enormous crags of black lava, which sometimes seemed to strengthen it and sometimes threatened to fall crashing to the waters directly below. Indeed landslides are by no means uncommon in Thera, and several persons have been killed even at the landing place by masses of stone falling from above.
As the light increased at the base of the cliff, it became possible to see the donkey track leading in a score or more of steep windings up the face of the rock from the landing to the city high above, arched here and there over old landslips or ravines, while near by were to be seen curious cave-dwellings, where caverns in the tufa had been walled up, provided with doors and windows, and inhabited.
There was some little delay in landing, even after our small boats had set us ashore on the narrow quay, slippery with seaweed and covered with barnacles. We were herded in a rather impatient group behind a row of shore boats drawn up on the landing stage, and detained there until “pratique” had been obtained, which entitled us to proceed through the devious byways of the tiny village close by to the beginning of the ascent. The wharf was covered with barrels, heaps of wood, carboys covered with wicker, and all the paraphernalia to be expected of the port of a wine-exporting, water-importing community; for Thera has to send abroad for water, aside from what she is able to collect from the rains, and also relies largely on her neighbors for wood. There are almost no native trees and no springs at all; and one French writer apparently has been greatly disturbed by this embarrassing difficulty, saying, “One finds there neither wood nor water, so that it is necessary to go abroad for each—and yet to build ships one must have wood, and to go for water ships are necessary!”
On emerging from the cluster of small buildings at the base of the cliff and entering upon the steep path which leads to the city above, we at once encountered the trains of asses that furnish the only means of communication between the village of Thera above and the ships below—asses patiently bearing broad deck-loads of fagots, or of boards, or of various containers useful for transporting liquids. It was easily possible to hire beasts to ride up the winding highway to Thera, but as the grade was not prohibitive and as the time required for a pedestrian to ascend was predicted to be from twenty minutes to half an hour, these were voted unnecessary, especially as it was still shady on the bay side of the cliff and would continue so for hours. So we set out, not too briskly, up the path. It proved to be utterly impracticable for anything on wheels, being not only steep but frequently provided with the broad steps so often to be seen in Greek and Italian hill towns, while it was paved throughout with blocks of basalt which continual traffic had rendered slippery in the extreme. The slipperiness, indeed, renders the ascent to Thera if anything easier than the coming down, for on the latter journey one must exercise constant care in placing the feet and proceed at a pace that is anything but brisk, despite the downward grade.
THERA
The only care in going up was to avoid the little trains of donkeys with their projecting loads and their mischievous desire to crowd pedestrians to the parapet side of the road, a propensity which we speedily learned to avoid by giving the beasts as wide a berth as the constricted path would allow, choosing always the side next the cliff itself; for the sheer drop from the parapet soon became too appalling to contemplate as the way wound higher and higher, turn after turn, above the hamlet at the landing. The view speedily gained in magnificence, showing the bay in its full extent, with the two entrance channels far away and the detached portion of the opposite crater wall, now called Therasia, as if it were, as it appears to be, an entirely separate island of a small local archipelago, instead of one homogeneous but sunken mountain. Directly below lay the landing stage with its cluster of white warehouses, the scattered cave-dwellings, and the tiny ships moored close to the quay—small enough at close range, but from this height like the vessels in a toy-shop. So precipitous is the crater wall that one could almost fling a pebble over the parapet and strike the settlement at the foot of the path. The varying colors of the rock, when brought out by the growing sunlight, added a sombre liveliness to the view, the red tones of the cliff preponderating over the forbidding black of the lava, while here and there a long gash revealed the ravages of a considerable landslip.
It was, indeed, a half-hour’s hard climb to Thera. But when the town did begin, it stole upon us ere we were aware, isolated and venturesome dwellings of the semi-cave type dropping down the face of the cliff to meet the highway winding painfully up, these in turn giving place to more pretentious dwellings with flat or domed roofs, all shining with immaculate whitewash and gleaming in the morning sun, in sharp contrast with the dark rocks on which they had their foundation. The scriptural architect who built his house upon the sand might well have regarded that selection as stable and secure compared with some of these Theran dwellings; for although they are founded upon a rock and are in some cases half sunk in it, there seems to be little guarantee that the rock itself may not some day split off and land them down among the ships.
When the winding path finally attained the summit, it was found to debouch into a narrow public square, flanked by the inevitable museum of antiquities and a rather garish church; the latter painfully new, and, like all Greek houses of worship, making small pretense of outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace. It may be sacred to St. Irene, and very likely is, for the island takes its modern name from that saint and boasts innumerable shrines to her memory. We take credit to ourselves that, although Thera called loudly with manifold charms, we first sought the sanctuary; but to our shame we did not remain there long. A venerable priest, perspiring under a multitude of gorgeous vestments, was officiating in the presence of a very meagre congregation, composed of extremely young boys and a scant choir. Fortunately for our peace of mind, this particular church’s one foundation was on the side of the square away from the precipice, giving a sense of security not otherwise to be gained. But the mountain, even on its gentler side, is far from being gradual, and is only less steep than toward the inner basin. The “blessed mutter of the mass” in Greek is so unintelligible to foreign ears that it soon drove us forth into the air outside and then to the little museum next door, where were displayed the rather overwhelming antiquities of the place,—mainly vases that had been made and used long before the eruption which destroyed the island’s original form so many thousand years before. Many of these were graceful in form, and some are in quite perfect preservation despite their fragility and the enormous lapse of time, revealing still the rude efforts of the early artist’s brush in geometric patterns, lines, angles, and occasionally even primitive attempts to represent animal shapes. Doubtless these relics are no more ancient than those to be seen by the curious in the palace of Minos in Crete, and are paralleled in antiquity by pottery remnants in other pre-Mycenæan sites; but for some reason the lapse of ages since they were made and used comes home to one with more reality in Thera than elsewhere, I suppose because of the impressive story of the eruption at such a hazy distance before the dawn of recorded history. So overpowering did these silent witnesses of a bygone day prove, that we disposed of them with a celerity that would have shocked an archæologist, and betook ourselves straightway to the modern town without, which ran temptingly along the ridge of the summit northward, presenting, like Taormina, a single narrow street lined with the whitest of shops and dwellings, with here and there narrow byways of steps leading up or down, as the case might be, to outlying clusters of buildings. This main thoroughfare, hardly wider than a city sidewalk, follows the uneven line of the mountain top, winding about and dodging up and down, sometimes by inclined planes and sometimes by flights of steps, such as are common enough in side streets of Italian or Greek hill towns.
From the higher points the city presented a sea of undulating white, the roofs divided almost evenly between the flat, parapeted style, designed to catch the falling rain, which is doubly precious in the island, and the dome, or half-barrel style, which bears witness to the local scarcity of timber, making necessary this self-supporting arch of cement. Thus over and over again is the lack of wood and water brought to mind. At a turn in the main street there disclosed itself a fascinating vista of white walls, inclosing neat courtyards, pebble-paved in black and white after the island manner, and framing in the distance a many-arched campanile in clear relief against the brilliant sky, the glare of the whiteness mitigated by the strong oblique shadows and the bronze green of the bells.
A THERAN STREET
Two things prevented our tarrying in Thera indefinitely. One was the urgent need of returning to our steamer and pursuing our cruise through the Ægean; the other was the lack of suitable lodging. However, it is likely that the latter would have proved anything but an insuperable obstacle if tested by an irresistible force of intrepid determination, for lodging we could have found, despite the fact that Thera boasts no hotel. Wandering along the street and stopping now and then to inspect the curious wayside shops, or to gaze in wonder through gaps in the walls of dwellings at the incredible gulf yawning beyond and beneath, we came suddenly upon a coffee-house which completed our capture. The proprietor, as it developed, spoke Italian enough to give us common ground, ushered us out upon a balcony that looked toward the water, and produced a huge flagon of the wine of the country. Ah, the wine of the country! It was yellow. It was not sickish sweet, like the Samian that Byron praised so. It was warming to the midriff and made one charitable as one sipped. Overhead flapped a dingy awning in the lazy western breeze. Below wound the donkey path, with its trains of asses silently ascending and descending through the shimmering heat of the April morning. Far, far beneath, and indeed almost directly at our feet, lay the toy-ships and the steamer, close by the little hamlet of the landing stage, where tiny people, like ants, scurried busily, but at this distance made no sound. Across the sea of rising and falling roofs came the tinkle of an insistent church bell, calling the congregation of some church of St. Irene. Bliss like this is cheap at three drachmas, with a trifling addition of Greek coppers for good-will! It was on this narrow balcony overlooking the bay that we fell in love with Thera. Before we had been merely prepossessed.
The Greek word for hotel sounds suspiciously like “Senator Sheehan” in the mouth of the native, as we had long ago learned; so we instituted inquiry as to that feature of the town, in the hope some day of returning thither for a more extended stay, with opportunity to explore the surrounding country. A distant and not unpromising edifice was pointed out, a coffee-house like our own, but provided with a large room where rather dubious beds were sometimes spread for the weary, according to our entertainer; and it may be that his shrug was the mere product of professional jealousy. Inexorable fate, however, decreed that we should not investigate, but content ourselves with rambling through the town from end to end, enjoying its quaint architecture, its white walls relieved only by touches of buff or the lightest of light blues, its incomparable situation on this rocky saddle, and its views, either into the chasm of the harbor or outward across the troubled expanse of the Ægean to other neighboring islands.
At the north end of the city, where the houses ceased and gave place to the open ridge of the mountain, there stood an old mill, into the cavernous depths of which we were bidden enter by an aged crone. It revealed some very primitive machinery, the gearing being hewn out of huge slices of round logs in which rude cogs were cut. Just outside stood a sooty oven, for the miller not only ground the neighborhood corn, but converted it into bread. Beyond the mill there was nothing in the way of habitation, although on a distant bend of the crater there was visible a white patch of basalt that bore the appearance of a populous city with towers and battlements. Still farther to the north, at the cape next the channel out to sea, lies an inconsiderable town, similarly situated on the ridge, while along the bay to the south are occasional settlements and windmills. But Thera town is the only congested centre of population.
In attempting to analyze the impression that Thera made on us, we have come to the conclusion that its chief charm, aside from its curious position, is its color; and that the difficulty of describing it is due in large part to the inability to paint in words the amazing contrasts of rock, city, and sky, not to mention the sea. One may depict, although feebly, the architectural charm, with the aid of his camera, or, if duly gifted, may chant the praise of Theran wine. With the aid of geological statistics one may tell just how the mountain would appear if we could draw off the ocean and expose its lower depths, leaving a circle of mountain inclosing a three-thousand foot cup, and jagged central cones. One might, by a superhuman effort, do justice to the importunity of the begging children of the town. But to give a true account of Thera demands the aid of the artist with his pigments, while best of all is a personal visit, involving little time and trouble to one visiting Greece—little trouble, that is to say, in comparison with the charms that Thera has to show. And it is safe to say that every such visitor will pick his way gingerly down over the slippery paving stones to the landing below with a poignant sense of regret at leaving this beauty spot of the Ægean, and sail out of the northern passage with a sigh, looking back at the lights of Thera, on the rocky height above the bay, mingling their blinking points with the steady stars of the warm Mediterranean night.
CHAPTER XIX. NIOS; PAROS;
A MIDNIGHT MASS
We spent Easter Sunday at Paros. It proved to be a mild and not especially remarkable day in the local church, which was old and quaint and possessed of many highly interesting features within and without, of which we must speak later on, for some of its portions date back to the pagan days. Its floor was littered with the aromatic leaves which had been dropped and trampled under foot the night before by the worshipers at the midnight mass; for it appeared that the chief observance of the feast in the Greek church was on the night before Easter, rather than on the day itself. Indeed we ourselves had been so fortunate, on the previous evening, as to attend this quaint nocturnal ceremony at the neighboring island of Ios, or Nios, as it is variously called.
Our little ship, as is the usual custom among the Greeks, had a shrine in the end of its saloon, with an icon, and a lamp was perpetually burning before it. The Greek takes his religion seriously, and makes it a part of his life afloat and ashore, it would seem. On Good Friday, for example, our national flag was lowered to half-mast and kept there in token of mourning for the crucified Lord, until the church proclaimed His rising from the dead, when it once again mounted joyously to the peak. The men seemed religiously inclined, and it was in deference to a request of the united crew, preferred while we lay in the harbor of Santorin, that it was decided to run north from that island to Nios, which was not far away and which possessed one of the best harbors in the Ægean, in order that the native sailors and the captain might observe the churchly festival according to custom—a request that was the more readily granted because we were all rather anxious to see the Easter-eve ceremony at its climax. Those who had witnessed it in previous years vouched for it as highly interesting, and such proved to be the fact; for between the ceremony itself and the excitement of reaching the scene, this evening furnished one of the most enjoyable of all our island experiences.
In reply to questions touching upon the remoteness of the church at Nios from the landing, the second officer, who spoke Italian, had assured us with a high disregard of the truth that it was “vicino! vicino!” It was pitch dark before we neared Nios, however, and as the moon was due to be late in rising that night we got no warning glimpse of the land, but were made aware of its approach only by a shapeless bulk in the dark which suddenly appeared on either hand, the entrance to the harbor being vaguely indicated by a single light, past which we felt our way at little more than a drifting pace until we were dimly conscious of hills all about, half-guessed rather than visible in the gloom. Then, faint and far away, we began to hear the clamor of the village bells, rung with that insistent clatter so familiar to those acquainted with southern European churches. That their notes sounded so distant gave us some idea at the outset that the mate’s “vicino” might prove to be a rather misleading promise, but very little was to be told by the sound, save that the churches from which the bells were pealing lay off somewhere to the right and apparently up a hill. Light there was none, not even a glimmer; and our three dories put off for the shore over an inky sea in becoming and decorous silence, toward the point where a gloom even more dense than the sky showed that there was land. The effect of it all was curious and had not a little of solemnity in it, as we groped our way to shore with careful oars and then felt about in the dark for the landing. The forward boat soon announced that some stone steps leading upward from the water had been found, and the rowers immediately raised a shout for lights, as one by one we were handed up the slimy stairs to the top of a broad stone quay, on which some white buildings could be dimly seen. A lantern did materialize mysteriously from some nook among the ghostly houses, and came bobbing down to the water’s edge, serving little purpose, however, save to make the rest of the darkness more obscure. By its diminished ray the party were assembled in a compact body, and received admonition to keep together and to follow as closely as possible the leader, who bore the light.
These instructions, while simple enough to give, proved decidedly difficult to follow. The moon was far below the horizon, and the stars, while numerous and brilliant, gave little aid to strangers in a strange land, who could see no more than that they were on a deserted pier flanked by dim warehouses, and a long distance from the bells which were calling the devout to midnight prayer. The lantern set off along the flagstones of the deserted hamlet; and after it in single file clattered the rest of us, keeping up as best we could. We emerged in short order from the little group of huts by the wharf and came out into a vast and silent country, where all was darker than before, save where the leading lantern pursued its fantastic way upward over what turned out to be a roughly paved mule track leading into a hill. Like most mule tracks, it mounted by steps, rather than by inclines, and the progress of the long file of our party was slow and painful, necessitating frequent halts on the part of the guide with the lantern, while a warning word was constantly being passed back along the stumbling line of pedestrians as each in turn stubbed his toes over an unlooked-for rise in the grade. There was little danger of wandering off the path, for it was bordered by high banks. The one trouble was to keep one’s feet and not to stumble as we climbed in the dark, able scarcely to see one another and much less to see anything of the path. The bells ceased to ring as we proceeded, and even that dim clue to the distance of the town was lost. Decidedly it was weird, this stumbling walk up an unknown and unfrequented island path in the dead of night; for it was long past eleven of the clock, and the Easter mass, as we knew, should reach its most interesting point at about twelve. Knowing this we made such haste as we could and the little town of Nios stole upon us ere we were aware, its silent buildings of gray closing in upon the road and surrounding us without our realizing their presence, until a sudden turning of the way caused the lantern far ahead to disappear entirely from our view in the mazes of the town.
It was as deserted as the little wharf had been. Moreover it was as crooked as it was dark. Here and there an open doorway gave out across the way a single bar of yellow light, but most of the habitations were as silent as the tomb, their owners and occupants being in church long before. On and on through a seeming labyrinth of little streets we wound, the long thread of the party serving as the sole clue to the way, as did Ariadne’s cord; for the lantern was never visible to the rear guard now, owing to the turns and twists of the highway. Twice we met belated church-goers coming down from side paths with their tiny lanterns, and the utter astonishment on their faces at beholding this unexpected inundation of foreigners at that unearthly hour of night was as amusing as it was natural. Once the thread of the party was broken at a corner, and for an anxious moment there was a council of war as to which street to take. It was a lucky guess, however, for a sudden turn brought the laggards out of the obscurity and into a lighted square before the doors of the church itself—a tiny church, white walled and low roofed, and filled apparently to its doors, while from its open portals trickled the monotonous chant of a male choir, the voices always returning to a well-marked and not unmelodious refrain.
In some mysterious way, room was made for us in the stifling church, crowded as it was with men and women. Candles furnished the only light. On the right a choir of men and boys, led by the local schoolmaster, chanted their unending, haunting minor litany. An old and bespectacled priest peered down over the congregation from the door of the iconostasis. Worshipers came and went. The men seemed especially devout, taking up the icon before the entrance and kissing it passionately and repeatedly. On each of us as we entered was pressed a slender taper of yellow wax, perhaps a foot in length, and we stood crowded in the little auditorium holding these before us expectantly, and regarded with lively and good-humored curiosity by the good people within. Presently the priest came forward from the door of the altar-screen with his candle alight, which was the signal for an excited scramble by a dozen small boys nearest him to get their tapers lighted first—after which the fire ran from candle to candle until everybody bore his tiny torch; and following the old priest, we all trooped out into the square before the church, where the service continued.
That was a sight not easily to be forgotten—the tiny square, in the centre of which stood the catafalque of Christ, while all around stood the throng of worshipers, each bearing his flaring taper, the whole place flooded with a yellow glow. The monotone of the service continued as before. The gentle night breeze sufficed now and then to put out an unsheltered candle here and there, but as often as this occurred the bystanders gave of their fire, and the illumination was renewed as often as interrupted.
The quaint service culminated with the proclamation of the priest that Christ had risen,—"Christos anéste,"—at which magic words all restraint was thrown off and the worshipers abandoned themselves to transports of holy joy. A stalwart man seized the bell-rope that dangled outside the church and rang a lively toccata on the multiple bells above, while exuberant boys let fly explosive torpedoes at the walls of neighboring houses, making a merry din after the true Mediterranean fashion; for the religious festivals of all southern countries appear to be held fit occasions for demonstrations akin unto those with which we are wont to observe our own national birthday. We were soon aware that other churches of the vicinity had reached the “Christos anéste” at about the same hour, for distant bells and other firecrackers and torpedoes speedily announced the rising of the Lord.
Doubtless a part of the Easter abandon is due to the reaction from the rigorous keeping of Lent among the Greeks, as well as to a devout sentiment that renews itself annually at this festival with a fervor that might well betoken the first novel discovery of eternal salvation as a divine truth. The Greek Lent is an austere season, in which the abstinence from food and wine is astonishingly thorough. Indeed, it has been reported by various travelers in Hellas in years past that they were seriously inconvenienced by the inability they met, especially in Holy Week, to procure sufficient food; for the peasantry were unanimously fasting, and unexpected wayfarers in the interior could find but little cheer. The native manages to exist on surprisingly little sustenance during the forty days. On the arrival of Easter it is not strange that he casts restraint to the winds and manifests a delight that is obviously unbounded. However, it need not be inferred from this that undue license prevails, for this apparently was not the case—not in Nios, at any rate. The service, after the interruption afforded by bells and cannonading, resumed its course, and was said to endure until three o'clock in the morning; a fact which might seem to indicate that the Easter pleasuring was capable of a decent restraint and postponement, although the Lord had officially risen and death was swallowed up in victory.
Our own devotion was not equal to the task of staying through this long mass, as it was already well past the midnight hour, and we had made a long and strenuous day of it. So, with repeated exchanges of “Christos anéste” between ourselves and the villagers, we set out again through the narrow byways of the town, and down over the rough mule path to the ship, each of us bearing his flaring taper and shielding it as well as possible from the night wind; for the sailors were bent on getting some of that sacred flame aboard alive, and in consequence saw to it that extinguished candles were promptly relighted lest we lose altogether the precious fire. We made a long and ghostly procession of winking lights as we streamed down over the hillside and out to the boats—a fitting culmination to one of the most curious experiences which the Ægean vouchsafed us.
We found the “red eggs” peculiar to the Greek Easter awaiting us when we came aboard—eggs, hard-boiled and colored with beet juice or some similar coloring matter, bowls of which were destined to become a familiar sight during the week or two that followed the Easter season. The Greeks maintain that this is a commemoration of a miracle which was once performed to convince a skeptical woman of the reality of the resurrection. She was walking home, it seems, with an apron full of eggs which she had bought, when she met a friend whose countenance expressed unusual rejoicing, and who ran to meet her, crying, “Have you heard the news?” “Surely not,” was the reply. “What is this news?” “Why, Christ the Lord is risen!” “Indeed,” responded the skeptic, "that I cannot believe; nor shall I believe it unless the eggs that I carry in my apron shall have turned red." And red they proved to be when she looked at them!
Owing to the exhaustion due to the festivities of the night before, we found Easter Sunday at Paros a quiet day indeed. The streets of the little town proved to be practically deserted, for it was a day of homekeeping, and no doubt one of feasting. The occasional vicious snap of a firecracker was to be heard as we landed on the mole that serves the chief town of Paros for a wharf and started for a short Sunday morning ramble through the streets. From the landing stage the most conspicuous object in Paros was a large white church not far from the water, rejoicing in the name of the “Virgin of a Hundred Gates,” as we were told we should interpret the epithet “hekatonpyliani.” It proved to be a sort of triple church, possessing side chapels on the right and left of the main auditorium, and almost as large. In that at the right was to be seen a cruciform baptismal font, very venerable and only a little raised from the level of the floor, indicating the uses to which this apartment of the church was put. The presence of ancient marble columns incorporated into this early Christian edifice was likewise striking. In the main church the most noticeable thing was the employment of a stone altar-screen, or iconostasis, with three doors leading into the apse behind instead of the customary single one, an arrangement which has often been commented upon as resembling the proskenion of the ancient theatre. It was all deserted, and the air was heavy with old incense and with the balsamic perfume of the leaves and branches that had fallen to the floor and been trampled upon during the mass of the previous night. It was all very still, very damp and cool, and evidently very old, doubtless supplanting some previous pagan shrine.
In the court before the church stood a sort of abandoned monastery, as at the pass of Daphne, only this one was spotless white, and with its walls served to shut in completely the area in front of the church itself. In a portion of the buildings of this inclosure is a small museum, chiefly notable for inscriptions, one of which refers to Archilochus, the writer of Iambic verse, who lived in Paros in the seventh century before the birth of Christ.
OLD COLUMNS IN CHURCH. PAROS
The chief fame of Paros was, of course, for its marbles. The quarries whence these superb blocks came lay off to the northeast, we were aware; and had time only allowed, they might have been explored with profit. The Parian marble was the favorite one for statues, owing to its incomparable purity and translucence, and the facility with which it could be worked up to a high finish. It was quarried under ground, and thus derived its designation, “lychnites,” or “quarried-by-candlelight.” Those who have visited the subterranean chambers formed by the men who anciently took marble from the spot relate that the exploration of the quarries is fraught with considerable interest and with not a little danger, owing to the complex nature of the galleries and the varying levels.
In wandering around the little modern town which occupies the site of the ancient city of Paros, and bears the name of Paroikia, we found not a little color to delight the eye, although the streets were generally rather muddy and squalid. On the southerly side of the harbor, where the basic rock of the island rises to a considerable height, there was anciently a small acropolis, which is still crowned with a rather massive tower built by the Franks out of bits of ancient marble structures. From the outside, the curious log-cabin effect caused by using marble columns for the walls, each drum laid with ends outward, was most apparent and striking. Within we found a tiny shrine, deserted as the great church had been, but still giving evidence of recent religious activity. Aside from the remnants of old temples, serving as the marble logs of this Frankish stronghold, there seemed to be little in Paros to recall the days when she was one of the richest of all the Athenian tributaries. A few prehistoric houses have been uncovered and several ancient tombs. But the most lasting of all the classic monuments are the quarries, now deserted, but still revealing the marks of the ancient chisels, whence came the raw material for most of the famous Greek sculptures preserved to us.
To us, seated on the pebbly beach and idly listening to the lapping of the Ægean waves, as we sunned ourselves and awaited the time for embarking, there appeared a native, gorgeous in clothes of a suspiciously American cut. He drew near, smiling frankly, and with a comprehensive gesture which explicitly included the ladies in his query, said: “Where do you fellers come from?” He had served in the American navy, it appeared, and had voyaged as far as the Philippines. Other Parians ranged themselves at a respectful distance and gazed in open-mouthed admiration at their fellow townsman who understood how to talk with the foreigners, and who walked along with a lady on either side, whom he constantly addressed as “you fellers” to their unbounded amusement and delight. We convoyed him to a wayside inn near the quay, under two spindling plane trees, and plied him with coffee as a reward for his courtesy and interest; and later we left him standing with bared head watching our little ship steam away westward, toward the setting sun and that land to which he hoped one day to follow us once more.
Our return to Athens from our island cruise was by way of the southeastern shore of the Peloponnesus, touching at Monemvasía, a rocky promontory near the most southern cape, and connected with the mainland by a very narrow isthmus, which it has even been necessary to bridge at one point; so that, strictly speaking, Monemvasía is an island, rather than a promontory or peninsula. It is a most striking rock, resembling Gibraltar in shape, though vastly smaller. In fact, like Gibraltar, it has the history of an important strategic point, though it is such no longer. Its summit is still crowned by a system of defenses built by the Franks, and the inclosure, which includes the entire top of the rock, also contains a ruined church. A narrow and not unpicturesque town straggles along the shore directly beneath the towering rock itself, much as the town of Gibraltar does, and in it may be seen other ruined churches, belonging to the Frankish period largely, and unused now. The entrance to this village is through a formidable stone gateway in the wall, which descends from the sheer side of the cliff above. A steep zig-zag path leads up from the town to the fort, which although deserted is kept locked, so that a key must be procured before ascending.
Those who have seen the Norman defenses at the promontory of Cefalù, on the northern coast of Sicily, will recognize at once a striking similarity between that place and this Grecian one, not only from a topographical standpoint, but from the arrangement of the walls at the top and lower down at the gateway that bars the upward path. Cefalù, however, is in a more ruinous condition than this Frankish fortress to-day. In point of general situation and view from the summit the two are certainly very similar, with their broad outlook over sea and mainland. The sheer sides of the promontory made it a practically inaccessible citadel from nearly every direction, save that restricted portion up which the path ascends, and the defense of it against every foe but starvation was an easy matter. Even besiegers found it no easy thing to starve out the garrison, for it is on record that the stout old Crusader Villehardouin sat down before the gates of Monemvasía for three years before the inhabitants were forced to capitulate.
The name of Monemvasía is derived from the fact that the isolated rock crowned with the fortress is connected with the mainland by a single narrow neck affording the only entrance. Hence the Greek μόνη ἔμβασις (moné emvasis) was combined in the modern pronunciation to form the not unmusical name of the place and has a perfectly natural explanation. Moreover the same name, further shortened, lives again in the name of “Malmsey” wine, which is made from grapes grown on rocky vineyards and allowed to wither before gathering, as was the custom in the old Monemvasía wine industry.
Of course the village at the base of the cliff is wholly unimportant now. Malmsey wine is no longer the chief product of this one solitary spot, but comes from Santorin, Portugal, Madeira, and a dozen other places, while Monemvasía and the derivation of the word are largely forgotten. The town has sunk into a state of poverty, and as for the fort, it is capable neither by artifice nor by natural surroundings of defending anything of value, and hence is of no strategic importance. It has had its day and probably will never have another. It is, however, ruggedly beautiful, and the town, if degraded and half ruined, is still highly picturesque, though unfortunately seldom visited by Greek pilgrimages. It formed a fitting close for our island cruise, and indeed it is, as we discovered, really an island itself, the ribbon of isthmus connecting it with the Peloponnesus having been severed years ago, when Monemvasía was worthy to be counted a stronghold. The gap in the land is now spanned by a permanent bridge, so that practically Monemvasía is a promontory still, lofty and rugged, but not ungraceful; and its imposing bulk loomed large astern as we steamed back along the coast toward the Piræus and home.