“I can’t help that,” I said. “The Polynesians used them too; and you see I can read them easily, though I don’t know Greek.”
I then told him the whole story of my connection with the island, and of the unfortunate results of the contact between these poor people and our superior modern civilization.
I have rarely seen a man more affected by any recital than was the head of the classical department of the Museum by my artless narrative. When I described the sacrifice I saw on landing in the island, he exclaimed, “Great Heavens! the Attic Thargelia.” He grew more and more excited as I went on, and producing a Greek book, “Pausanias,” he showed me that the sacrifice of wild beasts was practised sixteen hundred years ago in honour of Artemis Elaphria. The killing of old Elatreus for entering the town hall reminded him of a custom in Achæa Pthiotis. When I had finished my tale, he burst out into violent and libellous language. “You have destroyed,” he said, “with your miserable modern measles and Gardiner guns, the last remaining city of the ancient Greeks. The winds cast you on the shore of Phæacia, the island sung by Homer; and, in your brutal ignorance, you never knew it. You have ruined a happy, harmless, and peaceful people, and deprived archæology of an opportunity that can never, never return!”
I do not know about archæology, but as for “harmless and peaceful people,” I leave it to my readers to say whether the islanders were anything of the sort.
I learn that the Government has just refused to give the Museum a grant of five thousand pounds to be employed in what are called “Excavations in Ancient Phæacia,” diggings, that is, in Boothland.
With so many darkened people still ignorant of our enlightened civilization, I think the grant would be a shameful waste of public money. [{106}]
* * * * *
We publish the original text of the prophecy repeatedly alluded to by Mr. Gowles. The learned say that no equivalent occurs for the line about his “four eyes,” and it is insinuated, in a literary journal of eminence, that Mr. Gowles pilfered the notion from Good’s glass eye, in a secular romance, called King Solomon’s Mines, which Mr. Gowles, we are sure, never heard of in his life.—ED.
THE PROPHECY.
’Αλλ’ οτε καπνοδοχον τις εχων περι κραατος αυλον
και νηυς πυριπεμπτος ατερ πτερυyων ανεμωκεων
ιξεται εις ’Απιην χερσον δια λαιτμα θαλασσης,
δη τοτε πουλυβοτειραν επι χθονα λοιμος ικανει
ξυν δε τε τω πτολεμος, τοτε δη θεοι εκλειψουσιν
εξ εδρανων, τατ’ ολειται αιστωθεντα κατ’ ακρης.