Greece and the Ægean Islands

by Philip Sanford Marden

LANDING-PLACE AT CANEA

The landing at Canea, if the weather permits landing at all, is on a long curving stone quay, lined with picturesque buildings, including a mosque with its minaret, the latter testifying to the considerable residuum of Turkish and Mohammedan population that remains in this polyglot island, despite its present Greek rule under the oversight of the Christian powers of Europe. The houses along the quay are mostly a grayish white, with the light green shutters one learns to associate with similar towns everywhere in the Ægean. Behind the town at no very great distance may be seen rising lofty and forbidding mountains, snowcapped down to early May; but a brief ride out from the city to Suda Bay will serve to reveal some fertile and open valleys such as save Crete from being a barren and utterly uninviting land. The ordinary stop of an Italian steamer at this port is something like six or eight hours, which is amply sufficient to give a very good idea of Canea and its immediate neighborhood. The time is enough for a walk through the tortuous and narrow highways and byways of the city—walks in which one is attended by a crowd of small boys from the start, and indeed by large boys as well, all most persistently offering their most unnecessary guidance in the hope of receiving “backsheesh,” which truly Oriental word is to be heard at every turn, and affords one more enduring local monument to the former rule of the unspeakable Turk. These lads apparently speak a smattering of every known language, and are as quick and alert as the New York or Naples gamin. Incidentally, I wonder if every other visitor to Canea is afflicted with "Mustapha"? On our last landing there we were told, as we went over the side of the steamer to brave the tempestuous journey ashore in the boat which bobbed below, to be sure to look for “Mustapha.” The captain always recommended Mustapha, he said, and no Americano that ever enlisted the services of Mustapha as guide, philosopher, and friend for four Canean hours had ever regretted it. So we began diligent inquiry of the boatman if he knew this Mustapha. Yes, he did—and who better? Was he not Mustapha himself, in his own proper person? Inwardly congratulating ourselves at finding the indispensable with such remarkable promptitude, we soon gained the harbor, and the subsequent landing at the quay was assisted in by at least forty hardy Caneans, including one bullet-headed Nubian, seven shades darker than a particularly black ace of clubs, who exhibited a mouthful of ivory and proclaimed himself, unsolicited, as the true and only Mustapha,—a declaration that caused an instant and spontaneous howl of derision from sundry other bystanders, who promptly filed their claims to that Oriental name and all the excellences that it implied. Apparently Mustapha’s other name was Legion. Search for him was abandoned on the spot, and I would advise any subsequent traveler to do the same. Search is quite unnecessary. Wherever two or three Caneans are gathered together, there is Mustapha in the midst of them,—and perhaps two or three of him.

It is by no means easy to get rid of the Canean urchins who follow you away from the landing-place and into the quaint and narrow streets of the town. By deploying your landing party, which is generally sufficiently numerous for the purpose, in blocks of three or four, the convoy of youth may be split into detachments and destroyed in detail. It may be an inexpensive and rather entertaining luxury to permit the brightest lad of the lot to go along, although, as has been intimated, guidance is about the last thing needed in Canea. The streets are very narrow, very crooked, and not over clean, and are lined with houses having those projecting basketwork windows overhead, such as are common enough in every Turkish or semi-Turkish city. Many of the women go heavily veiled, sometimes showing the upper face and sometimes not even that, giving an additional Oriental touch to the street scenes. This veiling is in part a survival of Turkish usages, and in part is due to the dust and glare. It is a practice to be met with in many other Ægean islands as well as in Crete. It is this perpetual recurrence of Mohammedan touches that prevents Canea from seeming typically Greek, despite its nominal allegiance. To all outward seeming it is Turkish still, and mosques and minarets rise above its roofs in more than one spot as one surveys it from the harbor or from the hills. The streets with their narrow alleys and overshadowing archways are tempting indeed to the camera, and it may as well be said once and for all that it is a grave mistake to visit Greece and the adjacent lands without that harmless instrument of retrospective pleasure.

As for sights, Canea must be confessed to offer none that are of the traditional kind, “double-starred in Bædeker.” There is no museum there, and no ruins. The hills are too far away to permit an ascent for a view. The palace of the Greek royal commissioner, Prince George, offers slight attraction to the visitor compared with the scenes of the streets and squares in the town itself, the coffee-houses, and above all the curious shops. Canea is no mean place for the curio hunter with an eye to handsome, though barbaric, blankets, saddle-bags, and the like. The bizarre effect of the scene is increased by the manifold racial characteristics of face, figure, and dress that one may observe there; men and women quaintly garbed in the peasant dress of half a dozen different nations. In a corner, sheltered from the heat or from the wind, as the case may be, sit knots of weazen old men, cloaks wrapped about their shoulders, either drinking their muddy coffee or plying some trifling trade while they gossip,—doubtless about the changed times. From a neighboring coffeehouse there will be heard to trickle a wild and barbaric melody tortured out of a long-suffering fiddle that cannot, by any stretch of euphemism, be called a violin; or men may be seen dancing in a sedate and solemn circle, arms spread on each other’s shoulders in the Greek fashion, to the minor cadences of the plaintive “bouzouki,” or Greek guitar. There are shops of every kind, retailing chiefly queer woolen bags, or shoes of soft, white skins, or sweetmeats of the Greek and Turkish fashion. Here it is possible for the first time to become acquainted with the celebrated “loukoumi” of Syra, a soft paste made of gums, rosewater, and flavoring extracts, with an addition of chopped nuts, each block of the candy rolled in soft sugar. It is much esteemed by the Greeks, who are notorious lovers of sweetmeats, and it is imitated and grossly libeled in America under the alias of “Turkish Delight.”

From Canea a very good road leads out over a gently rolling country to Suda Bay. Little is to be seen there, however, save a very lovely prospect of hill and vale, and a few warships of various nations lying at anchor, representing the four or five jealous powers who maintain a constant watch over the destinies of this troublous isle. The cosmopolitan character of these naval visitants is abundantly testified to by the signs that one may see along the highroad near Suda, ringing all possible linguistic changes on legends that indicate facilities for the entertainment of Jack ashore, and capable of being summed up in the single phrase, “Army and Navy Bar.” The Greeks were ever a hospitable race.

The road to Suda, however, is far from being lined by nothing more lovely than these decrepit wine shops for the audacious tar. The three or four miles of its length lie through fertile fields devoted to olive orchards and to the cultivation of grain, and one would look far for a more picturesque sight than the Cretan farmer driving his jocund team afield—a team of large oxen attached to a primitive plow—or wielding his cumbersome hoe in turning up the sod under his own vine and olive trees. It is a pleasing and pastoral spectacle. The ride out to Suda is easily made while the steamer waits, in a very comfortable carriage procurable in the public square for a moderate sum. It may be as well to remark, however, that carriages in Greece are not, as a rule, anywhere nearly as cheap as in Italy.

It is a long jump from Canea to Candia, the second city of the island, situated many miles farther to the east along this northern shore. But it easily surpasses Canea in classic interest, being the site of the traditional ruler of Crete in the most ancient times,—King Minos,—of whom we shall have much to say. Candia, as we shall call it, although its local name is Megalokastron, is not touched by any of the steamers en route from the west to Athens, but must be visited in connection with a cruise among the islands of the Ægean. From the sea it resembles Canea in nature as well as in name. It shows the same harbor fortifications of Venetian build, and bears the same lion of St. Mark. It possesses the same lack of harborage for vessels other than small sailing craft. Its water front is lined with white houses with green blinds, and slender white minarets stand loftily above the roofs. Its streets and squares are much like Canea’s, too, although they are rather broader and more modern in appearance; while the crowds of people in the streets present a similar array of racial types to that already referred to in describing the former city. More handsome men are to be seen, splendid specimens of humanity clad in the blue baggy trousers and jackets of Turkish cut, and wearing the fez. Candia is well walled by a very thick and lofty fortification erected in Venetian times, and lies at the opening of a broad valley stretching across the island to the south, and by its topography and central situation was the natural theatre of activity in the distant period with which we are about to make our first acquaintance. Even without leaving the city one may get some idea of the vast antiquity of some of its relics by a visit to the museum located in an old Venetian palace in the heart of the town, where are to be seen the finds of various excavators who have labored in the island. Most of these belong to a very remote past, antedating vastly the Mycenæan period, which used to seem so old, with its traditions of Agamemnon and the sack of Troy. Here we encounter relics of monarchs who lived before Troy was made famous, and the English excavator, Evans, who has exhumed the palace of Minos not far outside the city gates, has classified the articles displayed as of the “Minoan” period. It would be idle in this place to attempt any detailed explanation of the subdivisions of “early,” “middle,” and “late Minoan” which have been appended to the manifold relics to be seen in the museum collection, or to give any detailed description of them. It must suffice to say that the period represented is so early that any attempt to affix dates must be conjectural, and that we may safely take it in general terms as a period so far preceding the dawn of recorded history that it was largely legendary even in the time of the classic Greeks, who already regarded Minos himself as a demi-god and sort of immortal judge in the realm of the shades. The museum, with its hundreds of quaint old vases, rudely ornamented in geometric patterns, its fantastic and faded mural paintings, its sarcophagi, its implements of toil, and all the manifold testimony to a civilization so remote that it is overwhelming to the mind, will serve to hold the visitor long. Nor is it to be forgotten that among these relics from Cnossos, Phæstos, and Gortyn, are many contributed by the industry and energy of the American investigator, Mrs. Hawes (née Boyd), whose work in Crete has been of great value and archæological interest.

Having whetted one’s appetite for the remotely antique by browsing through this collection of treasures, one is ready enough to make the journey out to Cnossos, the site of the ancient palace, only four miles away. There is a good road, and it is possible to walk if desired, although it is about as hot and uninteresting a walk as can well be imagined. It is easier and better to ride, although the Cretan drivers in general, and the Candian ones in particular, enjoy the reputation of being about the most rapacious in the civilized world. On the way out to the palace at Cnossos, the road winds through a rolling country, and crosses repeatedly an old paved Turkish road, which must have been much less agreeable than the present one to traverse. On the right, far away to the southwest, rises the peak which is supposed to be the birthplace of Zeus, the slopes of Mt. Ida. Crete is the land most sacred to Zeus of all the lands of the ancient world. Here his mother bore him, having fled thither to escape the wrath of her husband, the god Cronos, who had formed the unbecoming habit of swallowing his progeny as soon as they were born. Having been duly delivered of the child Zeus, his mother, Rhæa, wrapped up a stone in some cloth and presented it to Cronos, who swallowed it, persuaded that he had once more ridded the world of the son it was predicted should oust him from his godlike dignities and power. But Rhæa concealed the real Zeus in a cave on Ida, and when he came to maturity he made war on Cronos and deprived him of his dominion. Hence Zeus, whose worship in Crete soon spread to other islands and mainland, was held in highest esteem in the isle of his birth, and his cult had for its symbol the double-headed axe, which we find on so many of the relics of the Candia museum and on the walls of the ancient palaces, like that we are on the way to visit at Cnossos.

It is necessary to remark that there were two characters named Minos in the ancient mythology. The original of the name was the child of Zeus and Europa, and he ruled over Crete, where Saturn is supposed to have governed before him, proving a wise law-giver for the people. The other Minos was a grandson of the first, child of Lycastos and Ida. This Minos later grew up and married Pasiphaë, whose unnatural passion begot the Minotaur, or savage bull with the body of a man and an appetite for human flesh. To house this monster Minos was compelled to build the celebrated labyrinth, and he fed the bull with condemned criminals, who were sent into the mazes of the labyrinth never to return. Still later, taking offense at the Athenians because in their Panathenaic games they had killed his own son, Minos sent an expedition against them, defeated them, and thereafter levied an annual tribute of seven boys and seven girls upon the inhabitants, who were taken to Crete and fed to the Minotaur. This cruel exaction continued until Theseus came to Crete and, with the aid of the thread furnished him by Ariadne, tracked his way into the labyrinth, slaughtered the monster and returned alive to the light of day. Of course such a network of myths, if it does nothing else, argues the great antiquity of the Minoan period, to which the ruins around Candia are supposed to belong, and they naturally lead us to an inquiry whether any labyrinth was ever found or supposed to be found in the vicinity. I believe there actually is an extensive artificial cave in the mountains south of Cnossos, doubtless an ancient subterranean quarry, which is called “the labyrinth” to-day, though it doubtless never sheltered the Minotaur. It is sufficiently large to have served once as the abode of several hundred persons during times of revolution, they living there in comparative comfort save for the lack of light; and it is interesting to know that they employed Ariadne’s device of the thread to keep them in touch with the passage out of their self-imposed prison when the political atmosphere cleared and it was safe to venture forth into the light of day. It seems rather more probable that the myth or legend of the labyrinth of Minos had its origin in the labyrinthine character of the king’s own palace, as it is now shown to have been a perfect maze of corridors and rooms, through which it is possible to wander at will, since the excavators have laid them open after the lapse of many centuries. A glance at the plans of the Cnossos palace in the guide-books, or a survey of them from the top of Mr. Evans’s rather garish and incongruous but highly useful tower on the spot, will serve to show a network of passageways and apartments that might easily have given rise to the tale of the impenetrable man-trap which Theseus alone had the wit to evade.