A daughter of Dr. Hawes accompanied him on his voyage to Smyrna as the wife of Mr. Van Lennep, but was permitted only to enter upon the work to which she had devoted herself in Asia. She died at Constantinople of fever, within less than a year from the time of her embarkation. The health of Mrs. Benjamin was such as to oblige her and her husband to return home. A similar cause occasioned also the return of Mr. and Mrs. Jackson.
CHAPTER X.
GREECE AND THE GREEKS.
1824-1844.
When the missions to the Oriental Churches were commenced, Greece was suffering under the oppression of the Turks, and the people were glad of sympathy from any quarter. In the department of education, they seemed even to welcome Protestant missionaries. They compared favorably with the Roman Catholics, in their reception of the Scriptures, and in the matter of religious toleration. But an unfavorable change came over them after they had achieved their national independence.
Mr. Gridley was the first missionary to labor among the Greeks of Turkey, though he was not sent with special reference to them. He arrived at Smyrna in December, 1826. After acquiring the modern Greek, he visited Cesarea, four hundred miles to the eastward, hoping for better advantages in acquiring the Greco-Turkish language, and also to learn the condition of the Greeks in the interior. He was accompanied by Abraham, his teacher, a well-informed native of Cappadocia, and for two months applied himself to his studies, until admonished of danger by the frequent recurrence of headaches. Finding that these yielded to exercise, he deemed it prudent to execute a purpose he had long cherished of ascending Mount Argeus, from the top of which, according to Strabo, the Black and Mediterranean Seas might both be discerned in a clear day. Outstripping his attendants, Mr. Gridley mounted with great agility till he reached an elevation within three or four hundred feet of the highest summit, when he was prevented from advancing farther by the steepness of the ascent. There, in the region of perpetual snow, he remained a quarter of an hour, but could not discover the objects he had specially in view. The height of the mountain he estimated at thirteen thousand feet. Descending rapidly, he was overpowered with fatigue when he reached his companions, and they were soon after exposed to a violent storm of hail and rain. The headache soon returned with increasing violence, and was followed by fever, so insidious in its progress as at no time to suggest to him his danger. His death occurred on the 27th of September, fifteen days after the ascent, and a year after leaving his native land.
Thus he fell at the age of thirty-one, and at the very commencement of his career. The predominant characteristics of Mr. Gridley were resolution, promptness, and generosity. In all the duties of a Christian missionary, he was indefatigable in no ordinary degree, and his early removal was very trying.
The cause of education naturally became prominent at the outset of a mission among the Greeks. Scio was the seat of their most favored college, and when the people of that ill-fated island fled from the murderous sword of the Turks, some of the families sought refuge in Malta. There were bright youths among them, and six of these, and two from other Greek islands, so interested Messrs. Fisk and Temple, that they obtained permission to send them home, to be educated chiefly at the expense of the Board. This was before the results of the Foreign Mission School at Cornwall had become manifest. Three others arrived in 1826, and one in 1828; and nearly all received a liberal education, either at Amherst or Yale. Evangelinos Sophocles, from Thessaly, who came last, has long held the honorable position of a Professor in Harvard University. Four others,—Anastatius Karavelles, Nicholas Petrokokino, Alexander G. Paspati, and Gregory Perdicaris, were useful to the mission at different times after their return to the East. Several young men from the Armenian nation were likewise educated in the United States, and one of these, Hohannes, was until his death, a useful minister of the gospel among his countrymen. But the conclusion on the whole, to which the Board came, both in respect to Greeks and Armenians, was that a native agency must be trained in the country where it is to be employed.
The return of Mr. King to Greece, in 1829, has been mentioned. During the visit of Mr. Smith and myself to the island of Poros, in July of that year, he was united in marriage to a young Smyrniote lady, whose acquaintance he had formed some years before, while detained there on his return from Syria. Though Tenos was one of the more bigoted of the Greek islands, nearly every person of standing in the place called upon the newly married couple. A Greek priest sent a pair of doves, and soon followed with his blessing. It was this marriage which, in the providence of God, kept Mr. King in Greece until the close of his long and useful life.
Mr. King opened a school for girls in Poros, and the chief men sent their daughters to it. The town was noted for a modern church, called the Evangelistria, which, though built during the revolution, was the most showy edifice in Greece. It was the annual resort of hundreds of pilgrims, chiefly the lame, sick, and lunatic, who were brought there to be cured. It was the centre of modern Grecian superstition; as Delos, in full view of the church, had been in ancient times.