We made our farewell visits to the officers of the English regiments, who had overwhelmed us with hospitality during our stay, and went on board to get under way with the noon breeze. We were accompanied to the ship, not as the hero of Homer, when he left the same port, by three damsels of the royal train, bearing, “one a tunic, another a rich casket, and a third bread and wine” for his voyage, but by Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Wilson, soldiers’ wives, and washerwomen, with baskets of hurriedly-dried linen, pinned, every bundle, with a neat bill in shillings and halfpence.
Ulysses slept all the way from Corcyra to Ithaca. He lost a great deal of fine scenery. The passage between Corfu and Albania is beautiful. We ran past the southern cape of the island with a free wind, and are now off the Paxian Isles, where, according to Plutarch, Emilanus, the rhetorician, voyaging by night, “heard a voice louder than human, announcing the death of Pan.” A “schoolboy midshipman” is breaking the same silence with “on deck, all hands! on deck, all of you!”
Off the mouth of the Alpheus. If he still chases Arethusa under the sea, and she makes straight for Sicily, her bed is beneath our keel. The moon is pouring her broad light over the ocean, the shadows of the rigging on the deck lie in clear and definite lines, the sailors of the watch sit around upon the guns in silence, and the ship, with her clouds of snowy sail spread aloft, is stealing through the water with the noiseless motion of a swan. Even the gallant man-of-war seems steeped in the spirit of the scene. The hour wants but an “Ionian Myrrha” to fill the last void of the heart.
Cape Leucas on the lee—the scene of Sappho’s leap. We have coursed down the long shore of ancient Leucadia, and the precipice to which lovers came from all parts of Greece for an oblivious plunge, is shining in the sun, scarce a mile from the ship. The beautiful Grecian here sung her last song, and broke her lyre and died. The leap was not always so tragical: there are two lovers, at least, on record (Maces of Buthrotum, and Cephalos, son of Deioneos), who survived the fall, and were cured effectually by salt water. It was a common resource in the days of Sappho, and Strabo says that they were accustomed to check their descent by tying birds and feathers to their arms. Females, he says, were generally killed by the rapidity of the fall, their frames being too slight to bear the shock; but the men seldom failed to come safe to shore. The sex has not lost its advantages since the days of Phaon.
We have caught a glimpse of Ithaca through the isles, the land
“Where sad Penelope o’erlooked the wave.”
and which Ulysses loved, non quia larga, sed quia sua—the most natural of reasons. We lose Childe Harold’s track here. He turned to the left into the gulf of Lepanto. We shall find him again at Athens. Missolonghi, where he died, lies about twenty or thirty miles on our lee, and it is one, of several places in the gulf, that I regret to pass so near, unvisited.
Entering the bay of Navarino. A picturesque and precipitous rock, filled with caves, nearly shuts the mouth of this ample harbour. We ran so close to it, that it might have been touched from the deck with a tandem whip. On a wild crag to the left, a small, white marble monument, with the earth still fresh about it, marks the grave of some victim of the late naval battle. The town and fortress, miserable heaps of dirty stone, lie in the curve of the southern shore. A French brig-of-war is at anchor in the port, and broad, barren hills, stretching far away on every side, complete the scene before us. We run up the harbour, and tack to stand out again, without going ashore. Not a soul is to be seen, and the bay seems the very sanctuary of silence. It is difficult to conceive, that but a year or two ago, the combined fleets of Europe, were thundering among these silent hills, and hundreds of human beings lying in their blood, whose bones are now whitening in the sea beneath. Our pilot was in the fight, on board an English frigate. He has pointed out to us the position of the different fleets, and among other particulars, he tells me, that when the Turkish ships were boarded, Greek sailors were found chained to the guns, who had been compelled, at the muzzle of the pistol, to fight against the cause of their country. Many of them must thus have perished in the vessels that were sunk.