Greece and the Ægean Islands

by Philip Sanford Marden

A few shallops made shift to anchor close to the foot of the precipice, where a narrow submarine shelf projects sufficiently to give a precarious holding ground for small craft; and near them were grouped a few white buildings showing duskily in the morning half-light and serving to indicate the landing stage. In the main, however, there is little anchorage in the entire bay, which is practically bottomless. No cable could fathom the depth of the basin a few rods off shore, and fortunately none is needed, since the shelter is perfect. The steamer held her own for hours by a mere occasional lazy turning of her screw. To the southward lay the broad channel through which our ship had entered, and to the north lay the narrow passage through which at nightfall we proposed to depart for Athens. Everywhere else was the encircling wall of strangely variegated rock, buttressed here and there by enormous crags of black lava, which sometimes seemed to strengthen it and sometimes threatened to fall crashing to the waters directly below. Indeed landslides are by no means uncommon in Thera, and several persons have been killed even at the landing place by masses of stone falling from above.

As the light increased at the base of the cliff, it became possible to see the donkey track leading in a score or more of steep windings up the face of the rock from the landing to the city high above, arched here and there over old landslips or ravines, while near by were to be seen curious cave-dwellings, where caverns in the tufa had been walled up, provided with doors and windows, and inhabited.

There was some little delay in landing, even after our small boats had set us ashore on the narrow quay, slippery with seaweed and covered with barnacles. We were herded in a rather impatient group behind a row of shore boats drawn up on the landing stage, and detained there until “pratique” had been obtained, which entitled us to proceed through the devious byways of the tiny village close by to the beginning of the ascent. The wharf was covered with barrels, heaps of wood, carboys covered with wicker, and all the paraphernalia to be expected of the port of a wine-exporting, water-importing community; for Thera has to send abroad for water, aside from what she is able to collect from the rains, and also relies largely on her neighbors for wood. There are almost no native trees and no springs at all; and one French writer apparently has been greatly disturbed by this embarrassing difficulty, saying, “One finds there neither wood nor water, so that it is necessary to go abroad for each—and yet to build ships one must have wood, and to go for water ships are necessary!”

On emerging from the cluster of small buildings at the base of the cliff and entering upon the steep path which leads to the city above, we at once encountered the trains of asses that furnish the only means of communication between the village of Thera above and the ships below—asses patiently bearing broad deck-loads of fagots, or of boards, or of various containers useful for transporting liquids. It was easily possible to hire beasts to ride up the winding highway to Thera, but as the grade was not prohibitive and as the time required for a pedestrian to ascend was predicted to be from twenty minutes to half an hour, these were voted unnecessary, especially as it was still shady on the bay side of the cliff and would continue so for hours. So we set out, not too briskly, up the path. It proved to be utterly impracticable for anything on wheels, being not only steep but frequently provided with the broad steps so often to be seen in Greek and Italian hill towns, while it was paved throughout with blocks of basalt which continual traffic had rendered slippery in the extreme. The slipperiness, indeed, renders the ascent to Thera if anything easier than the coming down, for on the latter journey one must exercise constant care in placing the feet and proceed at a pace that is anything but brisk, despite the downward grade.

THERA

The only care in going up was to avoid the little trains of donkeys with their projecting loads and their mischievous desire to crowd pedestrians to the parapet side of the road, a propensity which we speedily learned to avoid by giving the beasts as wide a berth as the constricted path would allow, choosing always the side next the cliff itself; for the sheer drop from the parapet soon became too appalling to contemplate as the way wound higher and higher, turn after turn, above the hamlet at the landing. The view speedily gained in magnificence, showing the bay in its full extent, with the two entrance channels far away and the detached portion of the opposite crater wall, now called Therasia, as if it were, as it appears to be, an entirely separate island of a small local archipelago, instead of one homogeneous but sunken mountain. Directly below lay the landing stage with its cluster of white warehouses, the scattered cave-dwellings, and the tiny ships moored close to the quay—small enough at close range, but from this height like the vessels in a toy-shop. So precipitous is the crater wall that one could almost fling a pebble over the parapet and strike the settlement at the foot of the path. The varying colors of the rock, when brought out by the growing sunlight, added a sombre liveliness to the view, the red tones of the cliff preponderating over the forbidding black of the lava, while here and there a long gash revealed the ravages of a considerable landslip.

It was, indeed, a half-hour’s hard climb to Thera. But when the town did begin, it stole upon us ere we were aware, isolated and venturesome dwellings of the semi-cave type dropping down the face of the cliff to meet the highway winding painfully up, these in turn giving place to more pretentious dwellings with flat or domed roofs, all shining with immaculate whitewash and gleaming in the morning sun, in sharp contrast with the dark rocks on which they had their foundation. The scriptural architect who built his house upon the sand might well have regarded that selection as stable and secure compared with some of these Theran dwellings; for although they are founded upon a rock and are in some cases half sunk in it, there seems to be little guarantee that the rock itself may not some day split off and land them down among the ships.

When the winding path finally attained the summit, it was found to debouch into a narrow public square, flanked by the inevitable museum of antiquities and a rather garish church; the latter painfully new, and, like all Greek houses of worship, making small pretense of outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace. It may be sacred to St. Irene, and very likely is, for the island takes its modern name from that saint and boasts innumerable shrines to her memory. We take credit to ourselves that, although Thera called loudly with manifold charms, we first sought the sanctuary; but to our shame we did not remain there long. A venerable priest, perspiring under a multitude of gorgeous vestments, was officiating in the presence of a very meagre congregation, composed of extremely young boys and a scant choir. Fortunately for our peace of mind, this particular church’s one foundation was on the side of the square away from the precipice, giving a sense of security not otherwise to be gained. But the mountain, even on its gentler side, is far from being gradual, and is only less steep than toward the inner basin. The “blessed mutter of the mass” in Greek is so unintelligible to foreign ears that it soon drove us forth into the air outside and then to the little museum next door, where were displayed the rather overwhelming antiquities of the place,—mainly vases that had been made and used long before the eruption which destroyed the island’s original form so many thousand years before. Many of these were graceful in form, and some are in quite perfect preservation despite their fragility and the enormous lapse of time, revealing still the rude efforts of the early artist’s brush in geometric patterns, lines, angles, and occasionally even primitive attempts to represent animal shapes. Doubtless these relics are no more ancient than those to be seen by the curious in the palace of Minos in Crete, and are paralleled in antiquity by pottery remnants in other pre-Mycenæan sites; but for some reason the lapse of ages since they were made and used comes home to one with more reality in Thera than elsewhere, I suppose because of the impressive story of the eruption at such a hazy distance before the dawn of recorded history. So overpowering did these silent witnesses of a bygone day prove, that we disposed of them with a celerity that would have shocked an archæologist, and betook ourselves straightway to the modern town without, which ran temptingly along the ridge of the summit northward, presenting, like Taormina, a single narrow street lined with the whitest of shops and dwellings, with here and there narrow byways of steps leading up or down, as the case might be, to outlying clusters of buildings. This main thoroughfare, hardly wider than a city sidewalk, follows the uneven line of the mountain top, winding about and dodging up and down, sometimes by inclined planes and sometimes by flights of steps, such as are common enough in side streets of Italian or Greek hill towns.

From the higher points the city presented a sea of undulating white, the roofs divided almost evenly between the flat, parapeted style, designed to catch the falling rain, which is doubly precious in the island, and the dome, or half-barrel style, which bears witness to the local scarcity of timber, making necessary this self-supporting arch of cement. Thus over and over again is the lack of wood and water brought to mind. At a turn in the main street there disclosed itself a fascinating vista of white walls, inclosing neat courtyards, pebble-paved in black and white after the island manner, and framing in the distance a many-arched campanile in clear relief against the brilliant sky, the glare of the whiteness mitigated by the strong oblique shadows and the bronze green of the bells.