This town is of comparatively modern foundation, and was unknown before the fifteenth century. Its erection was attributed to a miracle in the Greek church. The Christian inhabitants had occupied a place in the interior, open to the continued assaults and attacks of the Turkish invaders of the country. While deliberating on searching for a more secure site, a shepherd, following after some stray sheep, discovered, in a cave over the sea, a statue of the Panaya, and brought it with great reverence to a church in the old city. The image, however, would not rest there, but returned to her former abode. It was brought back, but again returned; when the inhabitants, hailing the miraculous omen, followed it, built a church over the cave in which it was found, and commenced a new city round the church. So Parga rose upon its sea-beat rock, impending over the Adriatic, and protected by its impregnable situation from all attacks of the Infidels. The site chosen was particularly beautiful. A conical hill juts out from a deep bay, having secure harbours on each side. From hence the bay sweeps with picturesque curves, embracing with its long arms a magnificent sheet of water; the view terminated behind with the rugged precipice of the Albanian chain, and before by the islands of Paxo and Corfu, floating on a singularly clear and lucid sea. On the summit, over the caves, stands the acropolis of the city; and sloping down the sides, the houses of the inhabitants.
The Venetians, who were then in possession of the Ionian Islands, immediately took this little Christian community, on the opposite coast, under their care, and for many years they greatly prospered. Their town contained four thousand inhabitants, and their territory extended for twenty miles along the shores of the bay. The district had been anciently called Elaiatis, from the excellency of the oil it yielded; and the Parghiotes improved this quality to the utmost. Eighty-one thousand olive-trees clothed the sloping sides of the bay, and the oil of the industrious citizens of Parga was esteemed all over the Levant. The character of the people corresponded with this prosperity−they were esteemed for their piety and integrity. No Parghiote, it is said, was ever found among that numerous class in the country, which were robbers by land and pirates by sea; but, above all, they were distinguished by an ardent love of liberty, and an enthusiastic attachment to their native soil, that nothing could subdue or weaken; and this character they supported in this lawless region for three centuries.
But the tyranny and ambition of Ali Pasha now subdued with resistless violence all the strongholds in that country, and fixed his eye on Parga as a most desirable object. The compassionate citizens had opened their gates to the fugitive Suliotes and other oppressed people, driven from their native towns; and this unpardonable offence had added to the malignant hostility of Ali, and for twenty years he used every stratagem of force or fraud to obtain possession of the place, without effect; till at length the protection afforded to it by England, was the means of gratifying all his evil passions. When the Ionian Islands fell under the dominion of France, the Parghiotes put themselves under its protection, against the power of Ali, and received a French garrison in their town; but when the islands were ceded to the English, the garrison capitulated, and the inhabitants gladly committed themselves to the care of that free and enlightened state, which they had always looked up to with honour and respect, and they were received as an independent ally of the new Ionian republic. The rage of Ali, when he saw his prey thus snatched from him, was ferocious, and vented itself in a bloody sacrifice of other victims. For three years this connection continued, with mutual good-will; and they felt the security of a perfect confidence. The crisis, however, of their fate was at hand.
The Turkish government demanded the town of Parga, as part of their territory, and a secret negotiation was entered into with the English to surrender it. When this transpired, the place was filled with consternation and despair. The people rushed into the streets; they declared, and truly, that deserting them, was only sacrificing them to their bitter persecutors, who had sworn to exterminate them, and they would not survive it, but first destroy their wives and children, and finally themselves and their town. When no entreaty could prevail on them to remain behind the English garrison, they were offered an asylum in the island of Corfu, and a compensation for the property they left behind. To these terms they were compelled to accede, and the Glasgow frigate was sent to protect and convey them. The English found them in their church, disinterring the bodies of their ancestors, and burning their bones, that thus they might not be left to the sacrilegious insults of their enemies. The whole population then descended mournfully down the steep, some bearing the ashes of the dead, some grasping portions of the soil of a place so dear to them, and some the sacred image by whose direction they had chosen it. When arrived on the shore, they all kneeled down with one spontaneous impulse, kissed fervently the sand, and so took a last and sad farewell. Before they went out of the bay, the ferocious Albanians of Ali, who were waiting like famished tigers, rushed into the town. They found nothing that had life, all was still and motionless except the columns of smoke that was still eddying up from the ashes of the dead.
The desponding remains of this interesting people, after continuing for a short time in the Ionian Islands in poverty and distress, soon dispersed; the broken community was absorbed in other populations, and the name forgotten; and the traveller who sails to Corfu, looks up as he passes this lovely bay, and sees the remains of this aërial city, lately the residence of the free, industrious, and native Christian community, now the den of some of the most ferocious and savage hordes of Turks in the Ottoman empire.
| W. L. Leitch. | C. Bentley. |