LETTER XIX.
Corfu—Unpopularity of British Rule—Superstition of the Greeks—Accuracy of the Descriptions in the Odyssey—Advantage of the Greek Costume—The Paxian Isles—Cape Leucas, or Sappho’s Leap—Bay of Navarino, Ancient Pylos—Modon—Coran’s Bay—Cape St. Angelo—Isle of Cythera.
Corfu.—Called on one of the officers of the 10th this morning, and found lying on his table two books upon Corfu. They were from the circulating library of the town, much thumbed, and contained the most unqualified strictures on the English administration in the islands. In one of them, by a Count, or Colonel, Boig de St. Vincent, a Frenchman, the Corfiotes were taunted with their slavish submission, and called upon to shake off the yoke of British dominion in the most inflammatory language. Such books in Italy or France would be burnt by the hangman, and prohibited on penalty of death. Here, with a haughty consciousness of superiority, which must be galling enough to an Ionian who is capable of feeling, they circulate uncensured in two languages, and the officers of the abused government read them for their amusement, and return them coolly to go their rounds among the people. They have twenty-five hundred troops upon the island, and they trouble themselves little about what is thought of them. They confess that their government is excessively unpopular, the officers are excluded from the native society, and the soldiers are scowled upon in the streets.
The body of St. Spiridion was carried through the streets of Corfu to-day, sitting bolt upright in a sedan chair, and accompanied by the whole population. He is the great saint of the Greek church, and such is his influence, that the English government thought proper, under Sir Frederick Adams’s administration, to compel the officers to walk in the procession. The saint was dried at his death, and makes a neat, black mummy, sans eyes and nose, but otherwise quite perfect. He was carried to-day by four men in a very splendid sedan, shaking from side to side with the motion, preceded by one of the bands of music from the English regiments. Sick children were thrown under the feet of the bearers, half dead people brought to the doors as he passed, and every species of disgusting mummery practised. The show lasted about four hours, and was, on the whole, attended with more marks of superstition than anything I found in Italy. I was told that the better educated Christians of the Greek Church disbelieve the saint’s miracles. The whole body of the Corfiote ecclesiastics were in the procession, however.
I passed the first watch in the hammock-nettings to-night, enjoying inexpressibly the phenomena of this brilliant climate. The stars seem burning like lamps in the absolute clearness of the atmosphere. Meteors shoot constantly with a slow liquid course over the sky. The air comes off from the land laden with the breath of the wild thyme, and the water around the ship is another deep blue heaven, motionless with its studded constellations. The frigate seems suspended between them.
We have little idea, while conning an irksome school-task, how strongly the “unwilling lore” is rooting itself in the imagination. The frigate lies perhaps a half mile from the most interesting scenes of the Odyssey. I have been recalling from the long neglected stores of memory, the beautiful descriptions of the court of King Alcinous, and of the meeting of his matchless daughter with Ulysses. The whole web of the poet’s fable has gradually unwound, and the lamps ashore, and the outline of the hills, in the deceiving dimness of night, have entered into the delusion with the facility of a dream. Every scene in Homer may be traced to this day, the blind old poet’s topography was so admirable. It was over the point of land sloping down to the right, that the Princess Nausicaa went with her handmaids to wash her bridal robes in the running streams. The description still guides the traveller to the spot where the damsels of the royal maid spread the linen on the grass, and commenced the sports that waked Ulysses from his slumbers in the bed of leaves.
Ashore with one of the officers this morning, amusing ourselves with trying on dresses in a Greek tailor’s shop. It quite puts one out of conceit with these miserable European fashions. The easy and flowing juktanilla, the unembarrassed leggings, the open sleeve of the collarless jacket leaving the throat exposed, and the handsome close-binding girdle from it, seems to me the very dress dictated by reason and nature. The richest suit in the shop, a superb red velvet, wrought with gold, was priced at one hundred and forty dollars. The more sober colours were much cheaper. A dress lasts several years.