Visits to Monasteries in the Levant

by Robert Curzon

On landing at Coom Calessi, the European castle of the Dardanelles, I found that there was no inn or hotel in the place; but it appeared that the British consul, who lived on the top of the hill two miles off, had built a new house in the town for purposes of business, and upon the payment of a perquisite to the Jew who acted as his factotum, I was presently installed in the new house, which, as houses go in this country, was clean and good, but not a scrap of furniture was there in it, not even a pipkin or a casserole—it was as empty as any house could be. I sent my man out into the bazaar and we got some cabobs and yaourt and salad, and various flaps of bread, and managed so far pretty well, and then we went to the port, and after much waste of time and breath I engaged a curious-looking boat belonging to a Turk, who by the by was the only Turkish sailor I ever had anything to do with, as the seamen are generally Greeks; and then I returned to my house to sleep, for we were not to set out on our voyage till sunrise the next morning. The sleeping was a more difficult affair than the dinner, for after the beds at the embassy the boards did seem supernaturally hard; but I spread all my property on the floor, and lying down on it flat on my back, out of compassion to my hips, I got through the night at last.

All men were up and about in the Turkish town of Coom Calessi as soon as the sun tinged the hills of Olympus, and the gay boat in which I was to sail was bounding up and down on the bright transparent waves by the sandy shore. The long-bearded captain sat on a half deck with the tiller under his arm; he neither moved nor said a word when I came on board, and before the god of day arose in his splendour over the famous plains of Troy my little boat was spreading its white wings before the morning wind. Every moment more and more lovely scenes opened to my delighted eyes among the rocky and classic islands of the Archipelago. How fair and beautiful is every part of that most favoured land! how fresh the breezes on that poetic sea! how magnificent the great precipices of the rocky island of Samotraki seemed as they loomed through the decreasing distance in the morning sun! But no words, no painting can describe this glorious region.

I had hired my grave sailors to take me to Lemnos, but the wind did not serve, so we steered for Imbros, where we arrived in the afternoon. My boat was an original-looking vessel to an English eye, with a high bow and stem covered with bright brass; over the rudder there hung a long piece of network ornamented with blue glass beads: flowers and arabesques were carved on the boards at each end of the vessel, which had one low mast with a single sail. It is the national belief in England that ugliness is the necessary concomitant of utility, but for my own part I confess that I delight in redundant ornament, and I liked my old boat the better and was convinced that it did not sail a bit the worse because it was pleasing to the eye.

We rowed away towards Imbros, and passed in our course a curious line of waves, which looked like a straight whirlpool, if such an epithet may be used; for where the mighty stream of the Dardanelles poured forth into the Egean Sea, the two waters did not immediately mix together, but rolled the one over the other in a long line which seemed as if it would suck down into its snaky vortex anything which approached it. It was not dangerous, however, for we rowed along it and across it; but still it had a look about it which made me feel rather glad than sorry when we had lost sight of its long, straight, curling line of waves.

As I sat in my beautifully-shaped and ornamented boat, which looked like those represented in antique sculptures, with its high stem and lofty prow, I thought how little changed things were in these latitudes since the brave Captain Jason passed this way in the good ship Argo; and if an old author who wrote on the Hermetic philosophy may be taken as authority, that worthy's errand was much the same as mine; for he maintains that the golden fleece was no golden fleece at all, "for who," says he, like a sensible man, "ever saw a sheep of gold?" But what Jason sought was a famous volume written in golden letters upon the skins of sheep, wherein was described the whole science of alchemy, and that the man who should possess himself of that inestimable volume should conquer the green dragon, and being able by help of the grand magisterium to transmute all metals, and draw from the alembic the precious drops of the elixir vitæ, men and nations and languages would bow down before him as the prince of the pleasures of this world.

In the afternoon we arrived at the island of Imbros. The Turkish pilot would go no farther, for he said there would be a storm. I saw no appearance of the kind, but it was of no use talking to him; he had made up his mind, so we drew the boat up on the sand in a little sheltered bay, and making a tent of the sail, the sailors lit a fire and sat down and smoked their pipes with all that quietness and decorum which is so characteristic of their nation. I wandered about the island, but saw neither man nor habitation. I shot at divers rock-partridges with a rifle and hit none; nevertheless towards evening we cooked up a savoury mess, whereof the old bearded Turk and his grave crew ate also, but sparingly: I then curled myself up in a corner inside the boat under the sail, and took to reading a volume of Sir Walter Scott's poems.

I was deep in his romantic legends when of a sudden there came a roar of thunder and such quick bright flashes of sharp lightning that the mountains seemed on fire. Down came the rain in waterfalls, and in went Walter Scott and all his chivalry into the first safe hiding-place I could find. The crew had got under a projecting rock, and I had the boat to myself; the rain did not come in much, and the rattle of the thunder by degrees died away among the surrounding hills. The rain continued to pour down steadily and the fire on the beach went out, but my berth was snug enough, and the dull monotonous sound of the splashing rain and the dashing of the breakers on the shore soon lulled me to sleep, and I was more comfortable than I had been the night before in the bare, empty house at Coom Calessi.

Very early in the morning I peeped out; the rain was gone and the sun shone brightly; all the Turks were up smoking their eternal pipes, so I asked the old captain when we should be off. "There is too much wind," was his laconic reply. We were in a sheltered place, so we felt no wind, but on the other side of a rocky headland we could see the sea running like a cataract towards the south, although it was as smooth as glass in our bay. We got through breakfast, and for the sake of the partridges I repented that I had brought no shot. At last the men began righting the boat and getting things ready, doing everything as quietly and deliberately as usual, and scarcely saying a word to each other. In course of time the captain sat himself down by the rudder, and beckoning to me with his hand he took the pipe out of his mouth and said "Gel" (come). I came, and away we went smoothly with the help of two or three oars till we rounded the rocky headland, and then all at once we drifted into the race, and began dancing, and leaping, and staggering before the breeze in a way I never saw before nor since. Like the goats, from whom this sea is said to have been named, we leaped from the summit of one wave to that of the next, and seemed hardly to touch the water. We had up a small sail, and we sat still and steady at the bottom of the vessel. Never had I conceived the possibility of a boat scampering along before the wind at such a rate as this. My man crossed himself. I looked up at the old pilot, but he went on quietly smoking his pipe with his finger on the bowl to keep the ashes from being blown away. It was a marvel to me with what exactness he touched the helm just at the right instant, for it seemed as if we had sixty narrow escapes every minute, but the old man did not stir an inch. Gallantly we dashed, and skipped, and bounded along. What a famous lively little boat it was, yet it was carved and gilt and as pretty as anything could be! We were soon running down the west coast of Lemnos, where the surf was lashing the precipice in fury with an angry roar that resounded far out to sea: then of a sudden we rounded a sharp point and shot into such smooth water so instantaneously that one could scarcely believe that the blue waves of the Holy Sea, Αγιος πελαγος, as the Greeks call it still, could be the same as the furious and frenzied ocean out of which we had darted like an arrow from a bow.

We had a long row in the hot sun along the sheltered coast till we landed at a rotten wooden pier before the chief city or rather the dirty village of the Lemnians. I had a letter to a gentleman who was sent by a merchant of Constantinople to collect wool upon this island; so to him I bent my way, hooted at by some Lemnian women, the worthy descendants probably of those fair dames who have gained a disagreeable immortality by murdering their husbands. Here it was that Vulcan broke his leg, and no wonder, for a more barren, rocky place no one could have been kicked down into. My friend of the woolpacks, who was a Frenchman, was very kind and civil, only he had nothing to offer me beyond the bare house, like the consul's Jew at the Dardanelles, so I walked about and looked at nothing, which was all there was to see, whilst my servant hired a little square-rigged brig to take me next day to Mount Athos.

After dinner I made inquiries of my host what he had in the way of bed. His answer was specific. There was no bed, no mattress, no divan; sheets were unknown things, and the wool he did not recommend. But at last I was told of a mattress which an old woman next door was possessed of, and which she sometimes let out to strangers; and in an evil hour I sent for it. That treacherous bed and its clean white coverlet will never be forgotten by me. I laid down upon it and in one minute was fast asleep—the next I started up a perfect Marsyas. Never until that day had I any idea of what fleas could do. So simultaneous and well conducted was their attack that I was bitten all over from top to toe at the first assault. They evidently were delighted at the unexpected change of diet from a grim, skinny old woman to a well-fed traveller fresh from the table of the embassy. I examined the white coverlet—it was actually brown with fleas. I threw away my clothes, and taking desperate measures to get rid of some myriads of my assailants, I ran out of the room and put on a dressing-gown in the outer hall, at the window of which I sat down to cool the fever of my blood. I half expected to see the fleas open the door and march in after me, as the rats did after Bishop Hatto on his island in the Rhine; but fortunately the villains did not venture to leave their mattress. There I sat, fanning myself in the night air and bathing my face and limbs in water till the sun rose, when with a doleful countenance I asked my way to a bath. I found one, and went into the hot inner room with nothing on but a towel round my waist and one on my head, as the custom is. There was no one else there, and when the bath man came in he started back with horror, for he thought I had got that most deadly kind of plague which breaks out in an eruption and carries off the patient in a few hours. When it was explained to him how I had fallen into the clutches of these Lemnian fleas, he proceeded to rub me and soap me according to the Turkish fashion, and wonderfully soothing and comforting it was.