In spite of their skirts, the Greeks have as martial an air as possible; an old Greek who is vain, and they are all vain, is even a fierce-looking figure. All the men have small waists, and are proud of them; their belts are drawn as tightly as those of young girls in other countries. From this girdle, or from the embroidered pouch below it, comes a gleam which means probably a pistol, though sometimes it is only the long, narrow inkhorn of brass or silver. Besides the Albanian, there are other costumes. One, which is frequently seen, is partly Turkish, with baggy trousers. The Greek men are vain, and with cause; if the women are vain, it must be without it; we did not see a single handsome face among them. It was not merely that we failed to find the beautiful low forehead, full temple, straight nose, and small head of classic days; we could not discover any marked type, good or bad; the features were those that pass unnoticed everywhere. I speak, of course, generally, and from a superficial observation, for I saw only the people one meets in the streets, in the churches, in the fields, olive groves, and vineyards, on the steamers, and at the house doors. But after noting this population for two weeks and more, the result remained the same—the men who came under our notice were handsome, and the women were not. The dress of the women varies greatly. The Albanian costume, which ranks with the fustanellas or petticoats of the men, is as flat, narrow, and elongated as the latter are short and protruding. It consists of a sheath-like skirt of a woollen material, and over this a long, narrow white coat, which sometimes has black sleeves; the head is wrapped in loose folds of white. This was the attire worn by the girls who were at work in the fields. On Christmas Day I met a number of Corfiote women walking about the esplanade arrayed in light-colored dresses, with large aprons of white lace or white muslin, and upon their heads white veils with bunches of artificial flowers; in addition, they wore so many necklaces, pins, clasps, buckles, rings, lockets, bracelets, pendants, and other adornments of silver and silver-gilt that they clanked as they walked. This was a gala costume of some sort. We did not see it again.
The island of Corfu is about forty miles long. Its breadth in the widest part is twenty miles. The English, who have a genius for road-making which is almost equal to that of the Romans, have left excellent highways behind them; it is easy, therefore, to cross the island from end to end. In arranging such an expedition, that exhaustive dialogue about buying a carriage, which (to one's bewilderment) occupies by far the most important place in all the Manuals of Conversation for the Traveller, might at last be of some service.
"Have you a carriage?" it begins (in six languages).
"Yes; I have berlins, vis-à-vis, gigs, calashes, and cabriolets." (What vehicles are these?)
"Are the axle-trees, the nave, the spokes, the tires, the felloes, and the splinter-bars in good condition?" it goes on in its painstaking polyglot. Possibly one might be called upon to purchase splinter-bars in a remote island of the Ionian Sea.
Seated, then, in a berlin, or perhaps in a calash, one goes out at least to visit the olive groves, if not to cross the island. These groves are not the ranks of severely pruned, almost maimed, trees which greet the traveller in parts of southern Europe—groves without shade, without luxuriance; viewed from a distance, their gray-green foliage forms a characteristic part of the landscape, but at close quarters they have but one expression—namely, how many coins are to be squeezed out of each poor tree, whose every bud appears to have been counted. At Corfu one strolls through miles of wood whose foliage is magnificent; it is possible to lounge in the shade, for there is shade, and to draw a free breath. No doubt the Corfiotes keep guard over their leafy domain; but the occasional visitor, at least, is not harassed by warnings to trespassers set up everywhere, by children following him with suspicious eyes, by patrols, dogs, stone walls, and sometimes by stones of another kind which do not stay in the walls, but come flying through the air to teach him to keep his distance. It is difficult, probably, for people from the New World to look upon a forest as something sacred, guarded, private; we have taken our pleasure "in the woods" all our lives whenever we have felt so inclined; we do not intend to do any harm there, but we do wish to be free. In the olive groves of Corfu the wish can be gratified. Their aisles are wonderful in every respect: in the size of the trees (some of them are sixty feet high), in the picturesque shapes of the gnarled trunks, in the extent of the long vistas where the light has the color which some of us know at home—that silvery green under the great live-oaks at the South, when their branches are veiled in the long moss.
But Athens was before us; we must leave the groves; we must leave Nausicaa's shore. We did so at last in the wake of a departing storm. For several days the wind had been tempestuous. The signal, which is displayed from the Citadel, had become a riddle; it is an arrangement of flags by day and of lanterns by night, and no two of us ever deciphered it alike. If the order was thus and so, it meant that something belonging to the Austrian-Lloyd company was in sight; if so and thus, it meant the Florio line; if neither of these, then it might possibly be our boat—that is, the Greek coasting steamer which we had decided to take because we had been told that it was the best. I have never fathomed the mystery as to why our informant told us this. If he had been a Greek, it would have been at least a patriotic misrepresentation. We were dismayed when we reached the rough tub. But, after all, in one sense she was the best, for she dawdled in and out among the islands, never in the least hurry, and stopping to gossip with them all; this gave us a good chance to see them, if it gave us nothing else. I have said "when we reached her," for there were several false starts. We rose in the morning in a mood of regretful good-bye, expecting to be far away at night. And at night, with our good-bye on our hands, we were still in our hotel. But it is only fair to add that with its garlands of flowers and myrtle for the Christmas season; with its queer assemblage of Levantines in the dining-room; with its bath-room in the depths of the earth, to which one descended by stairway leading down underground; with its group of petticoated Greeks in the hall, and, in its rooms of honor above, a young Austrian princess of historic name and extraordinary beauty—with all this, and its cheerful lies, its smiling, gay-hearted irresponsibility, the Corfu inn was an entertaining place. The Greek steamer came at last. She had been driven out of her course by the gale, so said the pirate, ostensibly retired from business, who superintended the embarkations from the hotel. This lithe freebooter had presented himself at frequent intervals during the baffling days when we watched the signal, and he always entered without knocking. He could not grasp the idea, probably, that ceremonies would be required by persons who intended to sail by the coaster. When we reached this bark ourselves, later, we forgave him—a little. Her deck was the most democratic place I have ever seen. We think that we approve of equality in the United States. But the Greeks carry their approval further than we do. On this deck there were no reserved portions, no prohibitions; the persons who had paid for a first-class ticket had the same rights as those which were accorded to the steerage travellers, and no more; and as the latter were numerous, they obtained by far the larger share, eating the provisions which they had brought with them, sleeping on their coverlids, playing games, and smoking in the best places. There was no system, and little discipline; the sailors came up and washed the deck (a process which was very necessary) whenever and however they pleased, and we had to jump for our lives and mount a bench to escape the stream from the hose, as it suddenly appeared without warning from an unlooked-for quarter. The passengers, who came on board at various points during a cruise of several days, brought with them light personal luggage, which consisted of hens tied together by the legs, a live sheep, kitchen utensils, and bedding, all of which they placed everywhere and anywhere, according to their pleasure.
