Navarino was the scene of a great deal of fighting, during the late Greek revolution. It was invested, while in possession of the Turks, by two thousand Peloponnesians and a band of Ionians, and the garrison were reduced to such a state of starvation, as to eat their slippers. They surrendered at last, under promise that their lives should be spared; but the news of the massacre of the Greek patriarchs and clergy, at Adrianople, was received at the moment, and the exasperated troops put their prisoners to death, without mercy.
The peaceful aspect of the place is better suited to its poetical associations. Navarino was the ancient Pylos, and it is here that Homer brings Telemachus in search of his father. He finds old Nestor and his sons sacrificing on the seashore to Neptune, with nine altars, and at each five hundred men. I should think the modern town contained scarce a twentieth of this number.
Rounding the little fortified town of Modon, under full sail. It seems to be built on the level of the water, and nothing but its high wall and its towers are seen from the sea. This, too, has been a much-contested place, and remained in possession of the Turks till after the formation of the provisional government under Mavrocordato. It forms the south-western point of the Morea, and is a town of great antiquity. King Philip gained his first battle over the Athenians here, some thousands of years ago; and the brave old Miualis beat the Egyptian fleet in the same bay, without doubt in a manner quite as deserving of as long a remembrance. It is like a city of the dead—we cannot even see a sentinel on the wall.
Passed an hour in the mizen-chains with “the Corsair” in my hand, and “Coran’s Bay” opening on the lee. With what exquisite pleasure one reads, when he can look off from the page, and study the scene of the poet’s fiction—
“In Coran’s bay floats many a galley light,
Through Coran’s lattices the lamps burn bright,
For Seyd, the Pacha, makes a feast to-night.”
It is a small, deep bay, with a fortified town, on the western shore, crowned on the very edge of the sea, with a single, tall tower. A small aperture near the top, helps to realise the Corsair’s imprisonment, and his beautiful interview with Gulnare:—