From there we followed the course of the river for six hours, and crossed it fifty times at least. On the way we passed a dervish, an Albanian. He was seated on a sort of balcony, very high up, and had a gun in his hand, which he pointed at me and called on me to stop and pay. The sight of the Tartar, however, brought him to reason. Without one a traveller is exposed to great insult from such ruffians. As it was, a poor wretch who tried to pass himself off as one of our party was forced to stop and pay his quota.
In the afternoon we arrived at Meteora, the strange rocks of which we had seen from some distance up the river. We were given quarters in the house of a Cypriote Greek, from whom I learnt a good deal of the terrible exactions of Veli Pasha, in whose dominions we now were. Our host and his two sons, poor wretches with hardly a fez to their heads and mere sandals bound with a thong to their feet, came to welcome us. After the first compliments they fell into the tale of their woes. Their taxes were so heavy that unless the new year were abundantly fruitful the village must be bankrupt and become 'chiflik' or forfeit. When a village is unable to pay its taxes, the vizier, as universal mortgagee, forecloses and the land becomes his private property and the villagers his slaves. This is becoming 'chiflik.'
While we were sitting and talking of these troubles a great noise was heard below. Two Albanians, being refused conachi, had broken in the door of a house and entered by force, and the soubashi was gone out to quell the riot. He very properly refused them any kind of reception and drove them out to the khan.
My hosts had roasted me a fowl, but my heart was so full I could scarcely eat. How long will it please God to afflict these wretched people with such monstrous tyranny? Besides the exactions of the Government, scoundrels such as these Albanians infest the villages, force their way in houses and eat and drink immoderately and pay nothing. To ease my mind, when the daughter of my host brought me some raisins to eat with my wine I gave her a dollar. She seemed hardly to believe her eyes at first, then took it and kissed my hand.
Next morning, January 31st, I ascended to the principal monastery of Meteora. After a tiring walk of half an hour, winding among the crags of this strange place, we came to the foot of the rock on which it is perched, and found that the ladder commonly used, which is made in joints five or six feet long, had been drawn up. We called to the papades who were aloft to let down the rope and net. After some hallooing, down it came, a circular net with the meshes round the circumference gathered on a hook. Michael and myself, with my drawing materials, got in and were drawn up by a windlass. To swing in mid-air trusting to a rope not so thick as my wrist and 124 feet long (I measured it) is anything but pleasant. I shall not forget my sensations as I looked out through the meshes of the net as we were spinning round in the ascent. There was a horrible void below—sheer precipices on each side, and then the slipping of the rope as it crossed on the windlass. Once up, we were pulled in at the entrance, the hook drawn out, and we were set at liberty. The company that received us were some wretched papades, as ignorant as possible. They could tell me next to nothing about their monastery, except that on the occasion of an invasion of the Turks, a bey of Trikhala, one Joseph Ducas, had retired hither and established it and seventeen others. The buildings of ten of them still exist, but only two or three are still inhabited. The church here is a very good one, and there is a chapel of Constantine. The view is magnificent. I gave a dollar to the young priest who took me round, desiring him to use it for any purpose of the church; but I found, from what my peasant guide told me when we had got down, that the scamp had pocketed it for his own use, for that the chief papa had asked him as we were about to leave, if the stranger would not leave some parahs for the church. It was a lovely day, and beneath me, from the village, passed a procession of a bridegroom going to a neighbouring village to fetch his bride. His mother was on one side of his horse, another relative on the other; before him a male relation carried a flag, and behind came all his friends and family in their best dresses with guns on their shoulders, making a gallant show. It was a pretty sight.
We left Kalabaki by Meteora, and reached Trikhala about sunset. The solitude of the town and the vastness of the cemeteries gave one the creeps; and hearing that the plague was in the town at that moment, I mounted again, and rode four hours further to a khan and slept there.
Next day we rode to Phersala (twelve hours); but the plague being there also, we proceeded a further four hours to a khan under Thaumaco (sixteen hours' riding). From Meteora to Phersala is one uninterrupted plain which I thought would never end. I saw many villages, but much misery—especially in Trikhala and Phersala.
Next day we got to Zituni (six hours) about noon. I did not venture to stay on account of the plague, and passed on to Molo, at which we arrived in the evening, passing through the Straits of Thermopylæ.
Molo is a village of only 200 houses, and yet forty persons had died of the plague in it in the last three days. The terrified inhabitants had fled to the mountains, and we found only two hangees (men attached to the han) to receive us. We meant to have slept here, but the cats and dogs howled so terribly (always a symptom of the plague) that I could not sleep in comfort; so as the moon shone bright, we mounted and rode six hours further to a village opposite Parnassus, passing in safety the fountain famous for robbers who are almost always stationed there. The scenery here is very fine and romantic. In six hours more, after crossing two little plains besides that of Chæronæa, we arrived at Livadia (February 3rd). What between the cold, the horror of the plague, and the fatigue, it had been an appalling journey."