[207] {249} [Coron, or Corone, the ancient Colonides, is situated a little to the north of a promontory, Point Lividia, on the western shore of the Gulf of Kalamata, or Coron, or Messenia.
Antoine Louis Castellan (1772-1838), with whose larger work on Turkey Byron professed himself familiar (Letter to Moore, August 28, 1813), gives a vivid description of Coron and the bey's palace in his Lettres sur la Morée, etc. (first published, Paris, 1808), 3 vols., 1820. Whether Byron had or had not consulted the "Letters," the following passages may help to illustrate the scene:—
"La châine caverneuse du Taygete s'élève en face de Coron, à l'autre extrémité du golfe" (iii. 181).
"Nous avons aussi été faire une visite au bey, qui nous a permis de parcourir la citadelle" (p. 187).
"Le bey fait a exécuter en notre présence une danse singuliére, qu'on peut nommer danse pantomime" (p. 189; see line 642).
"La maison est assez bien distribuée et proprement meublée à la manière des Turcs. La principale pièce est grande, ornée d'une boisserie ciselée sur les dessins arabesques, et même marquetée. Les fenêtres donnent sur le jardin ... les volets sont ordinairement fermés, dans le milieu de la journée, et le jour ne pénètre alors qu'a travers des ouvertures pratiquées, au dessus des fenêtres et garnis de vitraux colorés" (p. 200).
Castellan saw the palace and bay illuminated (p. 203).]
[208] {250} Coffee.
[209] "Chibouque" [chibûk], pipe.
[210] {251} Dancing girls. [Compare The Waltz, line 127, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 492, note 1.]
[211] It has been observed, that Conrad's entering disguised as a spy is out of nature. Perhaps so. I find something not unlike it in history.—"Anxious to explore with his own eyes the state of the Vandals, Majorian ventured, after disguising the colour of his hair, to visit Carthage in the character of his own ambassador; and Genseric was afterwards mortified by the discovery, that he had entertained and dismissed the Emperor of the Romans. Such an anecdote may be rejected as an improbable fiction; but it is a fiction which would not have been imagined unless in the life of a hero."—See Gibbon's Decline and Fall [1854, iv. 272.]
[212] {252} [On the coast of Asia Minor, twenty-one miles south of Smyrna.]
[213] [A Levantine bark—"a kind of ketch without top-gallant sail, or mizzen-top sail.">[