The old Melos is utterly deserted, and the modern town is built on a pinnacle above it, which does not seem ever to have been included in the range of the city. The port is changed from the ancient site, where now a breakwater would be needed, as the land seems to have sunk greatly, and the old basin of the port is silted up to a point at the bottom of the bay, where a comparatively modern village has grown up, called Castro.
The magnificent harbor used to make of the island an important station before telegraphs were established, and might again, if the telegraph were laid to it; but now a man-of-war rarely calls, except to take a pilot for the Archipelago, and a Greek steamer stops once in a fortnight. But in heavy weather, any ship caught near runs for Melos. This keeps the place alive, but it has dwindled to a mere island village, where the vast labyrinths of tombs which perforate the hills show more human industry than the dwellings of the living. Earthquakes and malaria have desolated and almost depopulated it.
We had left Cerigo for Crete, and intended to take Melos on our return to Peiræus, but when within an hour of land we were caught by a terrific south-wester, the most to be dreaded of all the winds of the Ægean, and in spite of all we could do we were obliged to give up and run before the gale where it would send us. It was late in the evening when its fury came down on us, and taking in all sail except a small storm-sail at the foot of the mast to keep from coming up into the wind, we ran before it into the black night. I knew that there were no rocks ahead before Melos, and if we only made the island by daylight, we could easily fetch the port; but if not, and the yacht ran at night into the little archipelago of which Melos is part, it would be next to impossible to choose where our bones should be laid, for there are no lights, and many islands and rocks. The sea was, for our little twelve-ton craft, something fearful, and we thumped and hammered till the little thing quivered, when a wave struck her, almost as if we had come to the rocks. Sleep was out of the question—to sit or stand, equally so, and we kept to our berths, as the only way to avoid being pitched about like blocks. How long that night was! and in the middle of it I attempted to get up, and when I put my foot on the cabin-floor, found myself stepping into the water. We had sprung a leak with the straining.
But day came and cheerfulness. We ran in between the huge cliffs which form the portal of Melos harbor, with the wild surges beating against them till the spray flew high enough to have buried a larger craft than ours. Tired, aching, and hungry, for nothing could we get to eat till we arrived in port, we cast anchor in the welcome harbor late in the afternoon. Even then, the sea ran so high that we could not land until the next day.
Castro is a pile of white houses, rising in terraces from the shore; the streets mostly stairways, and the houses all whitewashed till they blind one in that rarely broken sunlight.
THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS. (DRAWN BY BIRCH FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.)
I landed, and, as usual, went to the little café, where the magnates of the village were discussing the arrival and the storm—the worst, they said, for many years. I called, of course, on Brest, who, to my surprise, remembered me after eighteen years; and we made an appointment to revisit together the sites I knew, and to see those I had not known before,—important excavations having been made since my former visit.
We went first to the new port, where some admirable statues, since taken to Athens, had been recently found. The owner of the little field by the water, which occupies the site of the inner port, having occasion to sink a well, struck the ruins of a temple of Neptune, and three statues were found, one of Neptune, a female goddess draped, but lacking the head, and a mounted warrior, apparently Perseus.
The Greek Government, according to their laws, forbade the exportation of them by any foreign government, and finally purchased them for thirty thousand francs—certainly a very small price. I succeeded in seeing them later, still in their boxes at Athens, and though not equal to the Venus, or of the same epoch, they are very fine works.