We rounded a promontory and entered the Piraeus, the port of Athens. It is a nice little pocket edition of a harbor well sheltered and with good anchorage. Ships of war might find a refuge there, but unfortunately it could not hold many of them. The town is quite modern, and also quite interesting; nobody stops there any longer than he is obliged to, and when travellers are delayed there by the detention of a steamer, there is generally a great deal of growling.
A swarm of boats came out to the ship, and as soon as the quarantine officers had examined the health bill, and admitted us to pratique, there was a rush of boatmen, dragomen, guides, hotel runners, and the like, so that the deck was speedily covered. On an average there must have been six and a half of these gentry to each passenger.
We passed the Custom House with the usual formalities, (a bribe of two francs,) and turned our attention to the hotel runners, and standing on the soil where Homer sang and Demosthenes pronounced his orations, we drove the closest bargain which we had yet made.
Four runners from as many hotels were after us, and we put ourselves up at auction to the lowest bidder, just as they used to sell out the paupers in that respectable town in New England where I was born and bred, and instructed in the mysteries of orthography and penny-tossing. They began at fifteen francs per day for each person, including wine, candles, and service.
The Hotel d’Angleterre would take us for fourteen.
The Hotel des Etrangers would go one better; we should be taken in at thirteen francs.
The other two hotels dropped out of the competition and went to the rear, and so we had it out between the pair that I have named. The runners appeared to be personal enemies, and covered each other with epithets that were delightful to hear, as we didn’t know what they meant. It is a great pleasure to hear one blackguard abuse another, in a language of which you are entirely ignorant. You run no risk of being shocked by the coarseness of the phrases, and can quite resign yourself to a contemplation of the gestures and emphasis with which the terse little speeches are delivered. If I could find the man who offered a reward for the invention of a new pleasure, I would name the above amusement and humbly ask for the money.
We whiled away a half hour in this way very pleasantly and profitably; all the Greek profanity that those runners vented on each other didn’t cost us a cent; in fact we made money by it, as we lowered the prices of the hotels at Athens to a satisfactory figure. For ten francs per day each person, we were to have rooms only one flight up, and each room should have a balcony. We were to be roomed, fed, wined, candled, washed, combed, and attended, for that paltry amount, and we were to have all the candies we wanted. Moreover they were to make no charges for lunches when we went on excursions; this is a point on which hotels in the Orient generally lay it on thick in the way of extras. We had brought them down to their lowest terms, and almost felt ashamed of ourselves after we had done it.
We started for Athens with the question still undecided in the hope that we might get a better offer before arriving there. On the way up we developed a new dodge.
“I’ve an idea,” I said to my German friends; “suppose we divide the party.”