Above the waters of the harbor towered the commanding rock of the Cnidian acropolis, something like twelve hundred feet in height—a bare and forbidding rock, indeed. Of the town and the temples that once clustered along its base nothing was to be seen. Man has long ago abandoned this spot and left it absolutely untenanted save by memories. It was in ancient times a favorite haunt of Aphrodite, and three temples did honor to that goddess on the knolls above the sea. Here also stood the marble Aphrodite carved by Praxiteles, and esteemed his masterpiece by many. It was carried off to Constantinople centuries ago, and perished miserably in a fire in that city in 1641.
Our three boatloads landed with no little difficulty on the abrupt rocks of the shore, being somewhat put to it to avoid sundry submerged boulders lying just off the land. It was a sharp scramble from the water’s edge to the narrow and ascending shelf above, on which the temples had stood. The ruins of them lay buried in tall grasses and in huge clumps of daisies, the latter growing in the most remarkable profusion. With a single sweep of the knife I cut a prodigious armful of them, and the dining saloon that night was made a perfect bower by the wild flowers that the returning party brought back with them.
It was one of the days when the non-archæological section of the party hastily left the remnants of ancient greatness below and set out precipitately for a climb, for the prospect of a view from the overshadowing cliff above was promising. It proved the most formidable ascent that we undertook in all our Ægean cruising. Anciently there was a gradual ascent by means of a zigzag causeway to the fortified heights above, but the majority of us disregarded it and struck off up the steep toward the summit. It is not a wise plan for any but hardened climbers, for the slope soon became so sharp that it made one giddy to look back down the mountain, and the footing was often difficult because of the shelving stone and fragments of loose rock. Small bushes were the only growth, and they were often eagerly seized upon to give the needful purchase to lift us onward and upward. The summit, however, amply rewarded our toil. It was easier going toward the top, for we found the old road and rose more gradually toward the point where the ancient walls began.
From the pinnacle of the rock the sweep of the view was indescribably fine. The sun was sinking rapidly to the horizon, illuminating the islands and the sea. The wind had dropped, the haze had disappeared, and the shore line of Asia Minor stretched away, clear cut, in either direction. We were practically at the southwest corner of the peninsula. The rugged headlands retreated to the north and to the east from our feet, while inland piled the impressive interior mountains rearing their snow-capped heads against the blue evening dusk. Over the Ægean, dark blue and violet islands rose from a sea of molten gold. At our feet lay the twin harbors and our steamer, looking like a toy ship, the thin smoke of her funnel rising in a blue wisp into the silent evening air. The fishermen from the tiny smack that had sought a night’s berth there had kindled a gleaming fire on the beach. Along the sharp spine of the promontory we could see the ancient line of wall, rising and falling along the summit and flanked here and there by ruined towers—a stupendous engineering work of a nation long dead. It was all impressively silent, and deserted save for ourselves. The course of empire had indeed taken its westward way and left once powerful Cnidos a barren waste.
But the darkness coming suddenly in these latitudes at this season warned us to descend in haste to the fire that was signaling us from the landing, and we slipped and slid down the old causeway to the boats. That night the moon was at the full, and we sat late on the after-deck enjoying the incomparable brilliancy of the light on sea and cliffs, shining as of old on a time-defying and rock-bound coast, but on a coast no longer teeming with life and harbors no longer alive with ships. And at midnight the wheezing of the engines and the jarring of the screw gave notice that we were slipping out of the harbor of Cnidos and out into the sea, to Rhodes.
CHAPTER XVII. RHODES
It was our purpose to land on Rhodes the isle, not at Rhodes the town. To visit the famous northern city where once stood the Colossus would have been highly agreeable had opportunity presented itself; but as it was we planned to coast along the southeasterly side of Rhodes and make our landing at the little less celebrated and probably even more picturesque site of Lindos. So in the morning we woke to find our vessel rolling merrily in a cross sea just off the entrance to the little bay that serves Lindos for a harbor,—a sea that stripped our breakfast table of its few dishes and converted the floor of the saloon into a sea of broken crockery. The waters of the bay proved calm enough when we had slid past the imposing promontory on which stood the acropolis of ancient Lindos, and felt our way across the rapidly shoaling waters to a safe anchorage. The water was of a wonderful clarity as well as of remarkable blueness, the bottom being visible for many fathoms and seeming much more shoal than was the case in fact. We were able to go quite close to shore before anchoring, and found ourselves in good shelter from the wind that was then blowing, although well outside the tiny inner port which lay at the foot of a steep bluff. Towering above the whole town stood the precipitous and seemingly inaccessible acropolis, its steep sides running down to the sea, the rich redness of the rock contrasting on the one hand with the matchless blue of the Ægean, and on the other with the pure whiteness of the buildings of the town. The summit of the promontory was crowned with the ruin of a castle of the Knights of Rhodes, who had once made this a famous stronghold in the Middle Ages. In fact the residence of the knights had obliterated the more ancient remnants of the classic period, which included a temple of Athena; and the work of exhuming the Greek ruins from under the débris of the Crusaders’ fortress was only just beginning when we landed there.
From the ship, the most conspicuous object on the heights was the ruined castle of St. John, the portal of which, giving the sole means of access to the plateau on top of the promontory, was plainly to be seen as we sailed in. It gave the impression of yellowish-brown sandstone from below, a color which it shared with the goodly battlements that frowned down from all sides of the citadel, even where the abruptness of the declivity for something like three hundred feet made battlements a seeming work of supererogation. Nestling under the shadow of the mighty rock on the landward side lay the modern village of Lindos itself, apparently freshly whitewashed and gleaming in the sun wherever the rock failed to shelter it from the morning warmth. It was one of those marvelously brilliant days that have made the Greek atmosphere so famous—cloudless and clear, with that clearness that reveals distant objects so distinctly, yet so softly withal. As for the nearer prospects, they were almost trying to the eyes, under the forenoon glare beating down on that immaculate array of close-set white houses and shops.