He had been for a tour in Asia Minor, and was on his way back between Constantinople and Athens, when in crossing the Gulf of Volo he was taken. His case was even more deplorable than Bronstedt's, for he not only lost whatever he had with him, and saw his drawings torn to pieces in sheer malice before his very eyes, but the miscreants claimed an enormous ransom, amounting to about 3,000l., and sent a notice to his friends in Athens to the effect that the money must be forwarded promptly or portions of the prisoner would be sent as reminders. Meanwhile he had to live with the pirates, and his experiences were no laughing matter. The ruffians used to show him hideous instruments of torture to frighten him into paying a higher ransom. They made him sleep in the open air, which half killed him with fever; and as they had nowhere to keep him when they went on their marauding expeditions, he had to go with them. On one occasion he saw a vessel run aground to avoid capture, and the sailors clamber up the rocks to escape. An old man who could not follow fast enough was brought in to be sold as a slave. The rest got away, and one of the pirates, in his fury at being eluded, in order to slake his thirst for blood seized on a wretched goat that was grazing by him and cut its throat. Several weeks of this sort of company and exposure left poor Stackelberg more dead than alive. His rescue, which was managed with great diplomacy and a splendid disregard for his own safety by Baron Haller, was finally effected at a cost of about 500l.
A Mr. Hughes, in company with Mr. Parker, whom he was "bearleading," arrived in Athens when my father was recovering; and about the last week of November, at their invitation, tempted by the opportunity of travelling with a Tartar and a buyulurdi—that is to say, in security and with as little discomfort as possible—he consented to join in a tour to Albania. I shall not give a detailed account of this voyage. It was over ground everyone has read about. It resulted in no discoveries and few adventures, and anyone who is curious about it will find it fully described in Hughes's book. General Davies, quartermaster-general to the British forces in the Mediterranean, was to form one of the party.
"We set out from Athens on November 29th, a large cavalcade. Two of my friends, though they had not yet learnt that to travel in these countries one must sacrifice a little personal comfort, were otherwise agreeable companions, gentlemanlike and goodhumoured; but I early began to foresee trouble with the General. He was one of those people who think everyone who cannot speak English must be either an assassin or a rogue, and was more unreasonable, unjust, and unaccommodating than any Englishman I ever met, odious as many of them make themselves abroad. It rained heavily, but everyone tried to be gay except the general, who damned gloomily, right and left.
We went over an interesting country, but as it was all in the clouds we enjoyed the scenery neither of Parnes nor of Phylæ. Our way was beguiled by the singing of some of the party. The Tartar especially gave proofs of a good voice, a very desirable quality in a Greek companion. The recollection of the scenery of any part of Greece or Asia Minor is bound up with that of the cheerful roundelays of the guides as one rides through the mountains, or the soft melodious song of the Anatolian plains. It is the characteristic thing of Eastern travel. After about three hours in the clouds we got down into Bœotia and saw below us a splendid country of mountain, plain, and sea.
Our Tartar had gone on before us to Thebes, so that when we arrived at our conachi (lodging) it was all ready for us. It was as well, for the weather had given Hughes a return of his fever, and he had to lie in bed.
Parker and I rode next morning without the others to Platæa. It has an admirable situation, and its walls are in better preservation and more interesting and venerable than any I have seen yet.
We could find nothing interesting at Thebes, so as soon as Hughes was better we all set out for Livadia. As we were passing through the hills that separate the respective plains of these two towns a pleasant coincidence occurred. We fell in with an English traveller, a Mr. Yonge, who was a friend of Hughes, and was bearing a letter of introduction to me. After greetings and compliments he gave us the latest European news, viz. of the grand defeat of the French at Leipsic. Glorious news indeed!
Hughes being laid up again at Livadia and the General impracticable, Parker and I made excursions thence to the Cave of Trophonius, Orchomenus, and Topolias, the point from which one visits the five emissaries of the Lake Copais. These last struck me as perhaps the most astonishing work of antiquity known to me. Two are still running, but the first, third, and fifth are quite dry. At the entrances the mountain has been cut to a face of thirty or forty feet high at the mouth and not a tool-mark visible, so they look like the work of nature. I wanted to go to the other side of the ridge to see the exits, but our guide assured me that it was too dangerous, because of the pirates who lie in the mountain in the daytime and would probably catch us. Poor Stackelberg's misfortune was too recent a warning to be neglected, so I gave it up.
All this country, broadly speaking, is quite uncultivated, and inhabited by immense herds attended by whole families living in huts and wandering, according to the pasture and season, in parties of perhaps twenty with horses and mules. They are not Turcomans, such as I saw in Asia, but are called Vlaki and speak Greek. One can imagine nothing more picturesque than they are and the mountains they live in.
Our quarters during our three nights out had been of the roughest, and when Parker and I got back to Livadia our whole evening was spent in the bath, ridding ourselves of the fleas and dirt we had been living in.