I promised to make no scandal about the cat, and took my leave; and as I rode off I saw him looking at me out of his cage with the cat sitting by his side. I was sorry I could not take aga and cat and all with me to Stamboul, the poor gentleman looked so solitary and melancholy.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Caracalla—The Agoumenos—Curious Cross—The Nuts of Caracalla—Singular Mode of preparing a Dinner Table—Departure from Mount Athos—Packing of the MSS.—Difficulties of the Way—Voyage to the Dardanelles—Apprehended Attack from Pirates—Return to Constantinople.
It took me three hours to reach Caracalla, where the agoumenos and Father Joasaph received me with all the hospitable kindness of old friends, and at once installed me in my old room, which looked into the court, and was very cool and quiet. Here I reposed in peace during the hotter hours of the day; and here I received the news that the captain of the vessel which I had hired had left me in the lurch and gone out to sea, having, I suppose, made some better bargain. This caused me some tribulation; but there was nothing to be done but to get another vessel; so I sent back to Xeropotamo, which appeared to be the most frequented part of the coast, to see whether there was any craft there which could be hired.
I employed the next day in wandering about with the agoumenos and Father Joasaph in all the holes and corners of the monastery; the agoumenos telling me interminable legends of the saints, and asking Father Joasaph if they were not true. I looked over the library, where I found an uncial Evangelistarium; a manuscript of Demosthenes on paper, but of some antiquity; a manuscript of Justin (Ιουστινου) in Greek; and several other manuscripts,—all of which the agoumenos agreed to let me have.
One of the monks had a curiously carved cross set in silver, which he wished to sell; but I told the agoumenos that it was not sufficiently ancient: I added, however, that if I could meet with any ancient cross or shrine or reliquary, I should be delighted to purchase such a thing, and that I would give a good price for it. In the afternoon it struck him suddenly that as he did not care for antiquities, perhaps we might come to an arrangement; and the end of the affair was that he gave me one of the ancient crosses which I had seen when I was there before, and put the one the monk had to sell in its place; certain pieces of gold which I produced rendering this transaction satisfactory to all parties. This most curious and beautiful piece of jewellery has been since engraved, and forms the subject of the third plate in Shaw's 'Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages,' London, 1843. It had been presented to the monastery by the Emperor John, whom, from what I was told by the agoumenos, I take to have been John Zimisces. It is one of the most ancient as well as one of the finest relics of its kind now existing in England.
On the evening of the second day my man returned from Xeropotamo with the information that he had found a small Greek brig, and had engaged to give the patron or captain eleven hundred piastres for our passage thence to the Dardanelles the next day, if I could manage to be ready in so short a time. As fortunately I had purchased all the manuscripts which I wished to possess, there was nothing to detain me on Mount Athos; for I had now visited every monastery excepting that of St. Anne, which indeed is not a monastery like the rest, but a mere collection of hermitages or cells at the extreme point of the peninsula, immediately under the great peak of the mountain. I was told that there was nothing there worth seeing; but still I am sorry that I did not make a pilgrimage to so original a community, who it appears live on roots and herbs, and are the most strict of all the ascetics in this strange monastic region.
All of a sudden, as we were walking quietly together, the agoumenos asked me if I knew what was the price of nuts at Constantinople.
"Nuts?" said I.