From Athos to Salonica.

By W.G.C.

The following pages are extracted from a journal written during a tour in the summer of 1861.

This journal was filled up day by day at the earliest opportunity, while the incidents of travel were still fresh in the recollection. The party consisted of the writer, an English friend, and his servant, Theodosius (called George, for shortness), a Greek, nimble in hand and tongue. Among other autobiographical stories, he told us how he got his second name. An English officer, bound for the Crimea, engaged him as his servant. When told his name, "Theo—what?" said he; "never heard of such an outlandish name! You shall be George!" And George he was.

We had come by sea from Constantinople to Mount Athos, and had ridden round the peninsula, visiting some sixteen of the twenty-one convents on the way, beginning with Rossikó, and ending with Chiliandari. Thence we were about to make our way along the coast to Salonica:—

Sept. 13. We left the monastery about noon. The fathers furnished us with mules and a guide, a Bulgarian, very ignorant and very stupid, scarcely able to speak a word of Greek, and not able to speak a word of any other language known to us.

Following a sandy watercourse, thickly dotted over with plane-trees, we soon came to the sea, close to the edge of which stood a monastic building now abandoned and in ruins. Our way thence led uphill and downhill, through pine-woods, over a sandy soil. Whenever we reached open ground, we saw to our right hand the deep blue sea, contrasting with the bright green of the stone pines and the white sands of the beach. Turning round, every now and then, we had splendid views of the Peak of Athos, rising white, bare, and abrupt above the successive tiers of wooded ridges which run across the promontory, rising higher and higher as they approach the culminating point. At 1.50, we passed a small guard-house, where were two men, in Greek costume—part of the police force maintained by the monks. This marks the limit of the sacred mountain. We did not, however, get clear of the hills for some time. At 3.30, we came to a little well of brackish water, as we descended the outermost hill. There we rested, and ate our brown bread (all the provisions we had), for nearly half an hour; then resuming our journey, we came to flat, marshy ground, with a low range of hills still on our left. From this time, as we surmounted each little eminence and descended into the grassy plain below, we kept looking eagerly for the traces of Xerxes' Canal. At last, just before sunset, we came to a plain where the ground was all but level, between sea and sea, and across which ran, in a straight line, what looked like the abandoned bed of a river, some twenty yards in width. "Here," we said, "at last, is the Canal!"

We had just arrived at this conclusion, when our guide called out, in articulate speech, "" Now, is clearly a corruption of , as Leake has mentioned. Here, therefore, was the long-looked-for spot. From the high ground beyond the plain, we could trace very clearly the whole course of the canal. Commencing to the north of a round, wooded lull on the Singitic Gulf—the Acropolis, doubtless, of the ancient Sane—it continues for a few hundred yards in a straight course, then makes a bend to the right, and then again runs parallel to its first direction to the Ægean sea. The distance is under a mile and a half-twelve furlongs, as Herodotus says, and the ground, which required cutting, nowhere more than fifty feet above the page 307 sea-level.¹ The course of the canal may be traced by a line of shrubs and trees, and greener grass. Were it worth while, it might be re-opened at no great cost. The mighty marvel which Juvenal refused to credit, had been surpassed, over and over again, by his own countrymen. The execution of the work was a mere trifle, considering the resources which Xerxes had at his command, and it was probably a very wise undertaking. Xerxes, of course, intended to add Thrace and Greece, and all the intervening coast, permanently to his dominions; and to the timid navigators of the time, whose plan was always to hug the shore, it was no small gain to escape the necessity of doubling the Cape of Athos, so exposed to the fury of the Etesian winds, and so ill provided with harbours. I cannot but think that Juvenal must have confused in his mind the Canal of Xerxes, and the project of the mad artist who wanted to carve Athos into a statue of Alexander the Great.

We contemplated the scene as long as the light lasted; then pursuing our way on foot, for we were wearied of the saddle, we reached Erissó by moonlight, at half-past seven. It is not more than two miles distant from the Canal. We had a letter from the Abbot of Sphigménu to one Anagnostes Marin, whose house we were conducted to by the first person we met in the street. Anagnostes himself was gone that very day to Thasos to look after his bees, but we were received with great alacrity by his wife and family, who bestirred themselves to get us supper, and to prepare the best chamber for us to sleep in. The houses are all on the same plan. The lower floor, built of rough stone, is occupied by granary, store-room, and stables; the upper, built of wood and mud whitewashed, consists of two or three rooms, opening out upon a wide gallery all of wood, extending the length of the house, and resting on scaffolding projecting far over the main wall. The room in which we slept contained the arms and linen of the household, and a quantity of miscellaneous wares in barrels and jars. We had no rest, owing to the incessant attacks of the sand-flies, which sound no trumpet of alarm like the mosquitoes, but whose bite is sufficiently painful to wake one out of the profoundest sleep. "We were right glad when the morning came.

Sept. 14. As soon as it was daylight, I got up and went to look about the modern village, Erissó, for traces of the ancient city—Acanthus. I was not long in finding what remains of it—fourteen rows of granite blocks, squared and built after the Hellenic fashion without mortar. The blocks are not high compared with their length and breadth. One that I measured (being a corner stone I could measure it), was five feet long, three and a half feet thick, and only one foot and a quarter in height. This was evidently the site of the Acropolis, which was subsequently occupied by a mediaeval fortress, now more ruinous than the Hellenic.

The hill on which it stands sinks abruptly on the seaward side. Between hill and sea, are a few hundred yards of level ground The sea is a few hundred yards distant; and I thought I could see where the "long walls" of Acanthus must have run, connecting the upper town with the harbour. Nature, indeed, has provided no "harbour," but it is comparatively easy to construct one in a tideless sea. The storms of centuries have, doubtless, buried the piers deep in sand, and, excepting the above-mentioned wall, there is not a trace of the old City to be seen.

The women of Erissó wear coloured handkerchiefs, knotted so as to make a kind of turban, on the head, and for gown the heavy woollen blanket-like stuff which one sees in Greece proper. The men wear a tunic, which is to the Albanian "fustanella" what the petticoats of the women are to the crinolines of Western Europe, such a one as their ancestors wore in the days of Xerxes, greaves of embroidered cloth, a sash

¹ It thus answers exactly to the description of Herodotus, vii. 22: "An isthmus about 12 stades wide, consisting of level ground and low hills."

page 308 wound many times round the waist, a gay jacket without sleeves, and on the head a red "fez," with a handkerchief like that of the women.

We set off at eight, with four mules and three men. We agreed to give 30 piasters per mule per diem—at the rate of 110 piasters per pound sterling—a bad bargain, we were told afterwards at Salonica; but then we were strangers, and unused to bargaining, and ignorant of the value of time and labour to man and mule in those parts.

We traversed first a long plain, covered with vines and Indian corn. Part of this district had been recently the subject of a lawsuit between the town of Erissó and the monastery of Chiliandari. It had been, they told us, in the possession of Erissó from time immemorial, but, nevertheless, the monks, who dearly love a lawsuit, thought they had found a flaw in the title, and brought an action against the town.

The case was tried at Constantinople, and decided in favour of Erissó; but the victory had cost them 300,000 piasters, and the monastery had been mulcted to a still larger amount. However, the fathers were rich, and intended to appeal to some other tribunal, and the town of Erissó, being very poor, looked forward with dismay to a second suit. Moreover, of the three hundred householders (onomata is the technical word) of Erissó, fifty had no share in the land, and grumbled much at being taxed for the costs of a suit in which they were not concerned.

By-and-bye we passed a farm belonging (without dispute) to Chiliandari, where there were many white mulberry trees, the kind on which silkworms feed. As we began to climb the first slopes of the hills, we passed great heaps of refuse of abandoned gold and silver mines, which reminded us that hereabouts Thucydides had some mines in right of his Thracian wife. These, however, must have been worked in comparatively recent times.

Five years ago I met at Constantinople an Irishman who was trying to form a company for the reworking of the mines opposite Thasos, for he said it had been found profitable in England to employ the improved machinery of the present day in resifting the heaps of refuse left by the miners of ruder days. What became of the company I never heard. I trust that its liabilities were "limited."

Still climbing, and getting wider and wider views over the sea and land, we reached the mountain village of Nizvoro at half-past twelve. It lies on the northward slope of a ridge, rising, perhaps, to the height of 2,500 feet, covered towards the top with green grass, and beautifully sprinkled with trees, beech and oak. On the eastern side of the village the ground breaks away abruptly, and is seamed by deep gullies. The earth, bare of vegetation, is partly of a deep red, and partly of a shining black, like the débris of some vast mine. It is, however, merely Nature's handiwork, but I am not geologist enough to give a guess at the cause. Like Erissó, and all the villages on these hills, Nizvoro is exclusively Greek. It is governed by a proestós, or mayor, chosen annually by the heads of families, subject to the approval of the Pasha, or Modur, of the district. He keeps order and collects taxes. We went to the house of the proestós for the time being, as the person whose duty it was to receive strangers. He was himself absent, but his son, a fine young fellow of five-and-twenty, welcomed us in his stead. In the room where we dined were forty or fifty old guns, all without locks, deposited there, we were told, by order of the Government, which does not allow any one to possess a gun till he has taken out a teskere or licence, which costs 100 piasters per annum. The son of the proestós accompanied me in a walk about the village. We met with an old man of seventy, or thereabouts, who, in answer to my question about ancient remains, informed me that at a distance of an hour and a half near the sea-shore were the ruins of the ancient "Stagier, birthplace of Aristotle," at a place now called Siderokapsa. (This name is I find in Kiepert's map, given not to a village, but to a district including Nizvoro.) page 309 When I asked him how he knew that it was Stagier, he said that the "didaskalos," or schoolmaster, had shown him an old book on geography, in winch the fact was stated. Apropos of the didaskalos, I inquired whether there was a school in the place, and was told that there was, that it contained on an average twenty boys, that the teacher was paid partly by the common fund of the village, and partly by the parents of the boys, and that altogether he made 4,000 piasters a year.

Now, at the mention of the didaskalos I did not observe any alteration in the young man's countenance, nor in the house did we see any sign of trouble; yet, as we learnt on the road from our muleteers, a most tragic event had recently happened in the family. The daughter of the proestós, sister of the young man who walked with me, had been for some years married to the didaskalos, who to his functions as schoolmaster united the profession of a lawyer, and was much consulted and respected in the country. His wife, it seems, was unworthy of, and unfaithful to, him. After many scandalous disorders, she at last crowned her iniquity by first drugging him with laudanum, and then cutting his throat as he slept. She and her lover hid the body in a closet, and then fled. The suspicions of the neighbours were roused; they broke into the house, discovered the corpse, and soon after arrested the culprits, who were sent to Salonica, and, under a searching examination from the Pasha, made a full confession, and were sentenced to be hung. This crime had been committed only a fortnight before our visit. But the catalogue of disasters was not complete. The wife of the young man, the murderess's brother, was so shocked at the news that it brought on an illness, of which she died in a few days. Yet the husband wore no mourning, and showed, as I have said, no sign of grief. On our way to Elerigova we met the old father returning. He held his head down as we passed, and seemed completely overwhelmed with sorrow. (This tragic story was confirmed in all its particulars by trustworthy people at Salonica.)

Less than a mile from Nizvoro is a ruined castle, once of great extent. It is called Paleocastro, and was the residence of the Pasha of the district. The scenery is very fine between this place and Elerigova. The path lies sometimes among woods, and sometimes through green pastures surrounded by hills covered with beech or oak. Every now and then there is a slope of golden fern up to the edge of the wood, reminding one of the park scenery of Old England. A ride of three hours and forty minutes brought us to the prosperous village of Elerigova, girdled with gardens and orchards, just as the last rays of the setting sun streamed through the blue smoke that rose from all its chimneys.

We stayed at a khan kept by one Constantine Agapeta. "We had an upper room, so full of fleas that we could get no rest. We had also a tough chicken, some grapes, and coffee, for which we were charged the preposterous sum of eighty piasters. Let no one who can possibly help it stay at the khan of Constantine Agapeta.

I noticed that the old men, who meet every evening in a kind of open space which serves for "agora," though Greeks in race and religion, wear the Turkish dress, turbans and trousers, while the young men wear the Greek or Albanian kilt.

We left Elerigova right gladly at half-past eight the next morning, Sept. 15. There had been some rain during the night, and the cold mists were still clinging about the high grounds along which our road lay. But the sun soon scattered them, and enabled us to see the magnificent views which opened before us, changing at every turn. The path lies through woods, and along the southern face of the mountain, so that we saw the three peninsulas of Chalcidicé, Athos, and Cassandra, with the gulfs between and the sea around, now one and now another, and sometimes all three together, spread below us as in a map. Athos is the most mountainous, page 310 and Cassandra the most level of the three. Hence the last named, being more adapted for human occupation, plays the greatest part in history, containing, among other cities, Potidæa and Scione. Sometimes we were on the very crest of the hill, and looked landwards over a wide sweep of rolling ground, sprinkled with trees, and the lakes of Basil and Beshek, the ancient Bolbe. Suddenly our path turned along the western slope of the mountain, and, instead of Athos, we saw a far higher mountain, soaring above the blue mist which hid his base, for away over the sea. We had exchanged Athos for Olympus. Southward was the peak of Ossa, almost rivalling Olympus in apparent height, though not in bulk.

Two hours from Elerigova is a fountain, where some ten days before our visit a party of twelve gipsies had come upon twelve others in their sleep, murdered ten, and left for dead the two remaining ones. They, however, recovered, and bore evidence against the murderers, who, we were glad to learn, were safely lodged in the prison at Salonica, awaiting their punishment. This story, which we did not at first believe, was, like the former, confirmed to us by the testimony of our friends at Salonica.

After four hours' ride we came to the fountain of Kerasia, in a grassy glade surrounded by oak woods. Spreading our plaids under a tree, we had luncheon and a brief sleep. Then, resuming our journey, we came, after a ride of four hours' more, to Galatista. The path generally falls from Kerasia, and there is quite a steep descent by a paved road down a bare hill-side to Galatista, whither we had sent our most active attendant before us to look out for a clean lodging. This he found in a house just built, and we were forthwith installed in a little room which had never been occupied before—so they told us. It was, however, provided with divans, on which we managed to sleep very comfortably. Galatista is beautifully situated on the side of a hill, looking over a wide and fertile valley, bounded on the other side by a low range of hills, over which towered the great Olympus, all rosy-purple, with the golden sunset streaming behind it. The houses are, as usual, built of rough stones and mortar, with wooden beams introduced at intervals, as a security against earthquakes. The upper part of the house is all wood, except only the tiles of the roof. The houses stand detached, with mulberry trees sprinkled among them. There are, as I was told, three hundred houses and six churches, an allowance of church accommodation larger even than is enjoyed by the City of London—only the sacred buildings at Galatista are probably small, for I did not see one of them. Near our lodging was a large ruined tower of mediæval construction, the only noticeable building in the place. The women here have a peculiar head-dress. A cylinder, of I know not what material, about the size of a common tumbler-glass, is set on the crown of the head, and then covered with a white linen veil, which in front comes down as far as the eyebrows, and behind falls in folds on the shoulders. The effect is not ungraceful.

Sept. 16. We were in the saddle—if I may dignify the wooden cradle which the mules carry by that name—before sunrise. Descending into the valley, we passed, at eight o'clock, Vasilika, a village in a well-watered place, surrounded with mulberry-trees and gardens exuberantly fertile. In the plain beyond there was nothing remarkable except some tumuli, of which I counted seven in different places, three being of enormous size, and covering, I dare say, the bones of brave men who lived before Agamemnon. We passed another very large one about a mile from the walls of Salonica. We passed, also, two Turkish baths, ruinous, but still used, built over natural sources of warm mineral water. There are now no warm baths at Salonica, although the town derived its ancient name, Thermæ, from that source. Probably the water was brought in pipes from a distance. There are many such springs in the neighbourhood, and the water issues at page 311 a very high temperature. All the way we saw nothing living except some kites and hawks circling high in air.

At half-past ten, after a ride of five hours, we reached our promised resting-place, the fountain of Matzarvis, where we stayed for two hours under the shade of a plane-tree. A quarter of a mile off, between us and the sea, was a Turkish village and mosque ruined and deserted—a mute confirmation of what we heard on all hands respecting the decay of the Turkish population in these regions. This was to be the last of our midday al fresco halts. It came to an end, leaving behind it "the immortal memory of one happy hour" (two happy hours, in plain prose and fact). It is worth while encountering all the fatigues of a journey on mule or horseback, merely for the pleasure of the siesta—the delights of rest earned by fatigue and the gratification of real hunger and real thirst, which, in our artificial life at home, few of us ever experience. And then the travellers have many things to say to one another which they had been thinking about on the way, but could not communicate because the unsociable mules will not go abreast, and the clatter of their iron shoes along the stony road drowns the voice and enforces silence. Besides, it brought to my mind similar halts in the Morea and Northern Greece with——and——, in former days.

After a further ride of two hours and twenty minutes we reached Salonica, skirting some vineyards on the way. Any passing traveller may take of the fruit as much as he can eat; to carry away more is thieving. For conscience sake, we ate all we took. The appearance of the town is very striking. A quadrangle of battlemented walls—a world too wide for the shrunk city—encloses a space of, perhaps, two square miles on a bare hill sloping steeply from the shore. Above is the Acropolis, called, in modern times, "the castle of the seven towers," and divided by a transverse wall from the lower town. Each angle at the shore is flanked by a large white round tower. Not far from the gate we passed a huge barrack partly burnt three years ago, and, in Turkish fashion, altogether abandoned in consequence. "Why is it that the Turks never repair anything?

A few minutes more and we arrived at the gate. We had, however, to traverse the whole width of the city before reaching the British Consul's house. A long and comparatively broad street, passing from gate to gate, preserves the line of the Roman Via Egnatia. Between it and the harbour the streets are tortuous, and the population dense; above, the houses get more and more sparse, the patches of ruin more frequent, till you reach the open ground which intervenes between city and citadel. My companion took up his abode with our Consul, while I went to inquire for Mr. Robert A., a wealthy English merchant, to whom I had an introduction. Mr. A.—next to the Pasha, perhaps, the most important man in Salonica—is spoken of, and spoken to, only by the name of "Bobby." With the Jews, he is "El Senor Bobby"; with the Greeks, ; with the Turks, "Bobby Effendi." I found him in a large building, which is, at once, counting-house and warehouse, and received a hospitable invitation, which I gladly accepted; and so, after seeing some of the sights of the town, was driven out, in an unoriental phaeton at the unoriental pace of ten miles an hour, to a pleasant country-house on the shore.

The rich abundance of an English dinner-table contrasted strongly (and shall I be thought sensual if I add favourably?) with the Lenten entertainment of the monks of Athos. After nightfall, lounging on the balcony, we looked across the bay at the city, which presented a strange and beautiful sight. It was the eve of the birthday of the Prophet, and all the minarets were illuminated with a circle of lamps hung round the gallery. One might fancy them to be so many crowns of light suspended in the air over the holy places of the city. A Turkish man-of-war, in the harbour, was dressed with lamps over hull and rigging; and every now and then a rocket shot up into the page 312 night, and fell in a shower of golden rain. A reflected shower rushed upwards from the depths, and met it on the still, glassy surface of the water.

Next morning, September 17, having been wakened at dawn by the salvoes of cannon announcing the feast-day, I crossed the harbour early with Mr. A. in his boat—a little craft with which he ventures out in the roughest weather. Not a month before this he was upset, in crossing from the town, by a sudden squall, and saved himself by clinging to the floating hull for two hours; when he was rescued, at last, by a man-of-war's boat Among the ships at anchor in the bay was the French steamer, which was to take me that evening to the Dardanelles. I proposed to leave my luggage on board at once, but this I found could not be done without special permission; accordingly, after we had landed, we elbowed our way through a dense mass of men, by dint partly of physical and partly of moral force (for who would hustle or impede the owner of half-a-million?) to the chief official of the Custom-house, who was smoking a chibouque tranquilly in the midst of a tumultuous crowd of petitioners. He at once gave permission for my luggage to be taken, without examination, on board the steamer. Except by such special leave, all luggage leaving the port is examined, because there is an export duty on all goods of 12 per cent., whether they are shipped for a foreign or a Turkish port. The result of this absurd regulation is absolutely to prohibit the home trade in many articles. Thus, for example, corn from Odessa on arriving at Constantinople pays a duty of 5 per cent., while corn from Salonica pays 12, which gives an advantage of 7 per cent, to the Russian. And this duty is imposed not at Salonica alone, but in all the ports of Turkey. The authorities have at last become aware of the absurdity, the suicidal folly, of the old system, and a new tariff has just been published, which is to come into force in October next, by which the export duty is reduced to 8 per cent. The following year it is to be 7; and a similar reduction is to take place yearly, till the duty has dwindled to l per cent., where it is to remain.

Delivered from my "impedimenta," I went to the British Consul's. I found him and Mr. S. at breakfast. The Consul was about to proceed by the next steamer to Mount Athos, having been invited to act as arbitrator in the great water-question between the monasteries of Kutlumush and Pantocrator. Mr. S. determined to return with him to see the monasteries we had left unvisited.

After breakfast Mr. B. came, according to appointment, to escort us over the sights of the town. Mr. B. is a missionary "sans en avoir l'air." He carried in his hand a dog-whip with which he frightened and sometimes hurt the "gamins" who came in our way. We found him full of information, for he has lived long in the place, and very glad to communicate it, for he has seldom an opportunity of doing so. He has made himself a comfortable little English home—which, of course, implies that he has an English wife—where he entertained us hospitably with Edinburgh ale. Thus fortified, we set out on our walk. First, we went to what is called the Arch of Augustus, in the western wall of the city. The masonry is excellent, and may belong either to the Augustan age or to that of Cassander. An inscription on the wall close by¹ does not help us to a date (excepting that the names show it to have been put there in Roman times); nor, indeed, do we know that it is coeval with the archway. It is chiefly interesting as containing the titles of certain magistrates of the city. One of these officers styles himself "Son of Cleopatra," as if he were "without father born."

"We next went to the Church of the Holy Apostles—a Byzantine church of the usual brick-and-mortar masonry with marble columns in the portico, a dome in the centre, and four smaller domes round it. The church is very small, but, like the old cathedral of Athens, it has an air of great antiquity, and enjoys a

¹ Given by Leake.

page 313 reputation accordingly. It is now, like all the old churches of Salonica, a mosque. We made vain attempts to find the hodja—the beadle who keeps the keys—and so were obliged to content ourselves with a survey of the outside.¹

Not far off is a curious monument of old Thessalonica, which had already fallen in my way the day before. It is a decorative facade, whether of an agora, a hippodrome or other public building, of two stories, the first columns with plain shafts and Corinthian capitals, supporting horizontal architraves and entablature, above which, at equal distances, are four pilasters, with a statue in high relief on either side supporting a cornice. The whole is of white marble, and some of the blocks resting on the pillars are of enormous size—one, for instance, which I measured roughly, is twelve feet long, four wide, and two high. The pail's of statues, which are much mutilated, appear to represent—1. Ganymede and Leda. 2. Paris, with goat and Phrygian cap, and Ceres. 3. Venus and Bacchus with his panther. 4. A winged Victory and Triton blowing a horn. The combination is somewhat bizarre; but, probably, as both figures could not be seen at once they were not intended to have any relation to each other. The work appears to belong rather to Macedonian than Roman times; but, considering the eclecticism and imitative spirit which prevailed from the time of Alexander to that of Hadrian, it is impossible to pronounce a definite opinion. The Spanish Jews who form the great mass of the inhabitants of Salonica, call these figures, "Las Incantadas," supposing them to have been petrified by magic. Several Jewish families occupy the house which is attached to the edifice, and it is only by entering and going upstairs that one can obtain a good view of the sculptures. A host of young Israelites surrounded us, begging in clamorous and shameless fashion. On a kind of terrace, on the second story of the house, they had put up a wooden frame-work intertwined with reeds. This, they told us, was for the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles on the following Saturday. With what tenacity does this people cling to the outward ceremonies of their religion! After all their wanderings from Palestine to Italy and Spain, and thence back to the East—after all their persecutions, we find them practising in the midst of a busy commercial city a custom learnt 3,000 years ago in the deserts of Arabia. Yet, if general report may be trusted, the Jews of Salonica are a most degraded race, and have long forgotten the moral teaching of their sacred books.

The population of Salonica is estimated by the best informed of its inhabitants at 70,000, of whom 50,000 are Jews, 10,000 Greeks, and 10,000 Turks. To this we must add about 400 Turks, consuls, merchants, and refugees, Italian or Hungarian. Our next visit was to the Eski Djaniss, or "old mosque," which has been a church—what church our conductor did not know. It is in the form of a basilica. It has a nave and two aisles, and a gallery for women corresponding to our triforium. At the eastern end is an apse. The length of the nave is forty-four paces, its breadth eighteen, and that of each aisle eight. There are on each side twelve columns, with plain shafts and capitals of contorted and exaggerated foliage, with Ionic volutes. They belonged probably to a church still earlier than the present building, for the arches spring from capitals placed upon the former capitals, of much ruder design and workmanship. The only persons in the mosque beside ourselves were some Jews, who were engaged in beating the husk from some boiled wheat for the use of the Turkish hodja. They had put the corn in what had been the Christian

¹ Mr. Finlay, whom I saw afterwards at Athens, told me that he had failed also to find the hodja. The church, however, he says, is not so old as it looks. Over the door are the words , and the same words are inscribed on the pillars of the portico, with the addition of the name of this patriarch and founder—Niphon. Now, Niphon the First was patriarch from 1313 to 1315, and to him, doubtless, the building of the church must be assigned.

page 314 font, hollowed out of a pagan cippus or tombstone, on which the inscription in Greek was still legible. It would be difficult to imagine a stranger combination of creeds.

S. Sophia's—now, of course, a mosque—was built in humble imitation of its namesake at Constantinople. The Turks added a portico supported with marble pillars and a minaret. In front is a court with some plane lime and cypress trees. The entrance to this court dates from Christian times, as does the octagonal belfry tower. Inside are six pillars of verde antique with the foliage of the capitals violently contorted, as if in a high wind—the same style which we had observed in the basilica. Some short pillars support the Gynæconitis, or women's gallery above. In the dome is a mosaic of the Ascension, the Virgin and the Apostles standing round, with trees between each figure. The figure of our Lord has been obliterated by the Turks, and its place supplied by an inscription; the feet, however, are still left, supported by two angels. The whole verse, "Ye men of Galilee," &c. is inscribed on the mosaic. In the apse is another mosaic of the Virgin and Child. The great treasure of the church is a pulpit of verde antique, called St. Paul's. From the style of its rude carvings, it cannot be older than the fifth or sixth century, and may be much later.

The so-called "Arch of Constantine" spans what I have before mentioned as the main street of the old, as it still is of the modern town, the Via Egnatia. It is now reduced to mere naked brickwork, except the basement, which is covered with sculptures in high relief, unfortunately concealed for the most part by wooden shops. One of the sides represents, in the upper division, an emperor altering a town in a triumphal car. There is a touch of humour in the introduction of Cæsar's dog trotting by his side. In the lower compartment is a battle. The workmanship seems to me more like the time of Trajan. If he arch be called Constantine's on any good authority, it may be an earlier arch renamed, or the figures may have been stolen to adorn it, as in the Arch of Constantine at Rome. Only a fragment of the original gate remains. It has evidently been quadruple, in the form of the Arc de l'Etoile at Paris.

The Rotunda was, it is said, a temple of Castor and Pollux before it was the Church of St. George. The form is indicated by the name. Perhaps it was originally suggested by the Pantheon. The walls are twenty-two feet thick, and its interior diameter eighty feet. At the time of its conversion an apse was added Round the lower part of the dome are some curious mosaics, figures of Apostles, &c., in eight compartments, standing under an arcade, or portico, of highly ornamental architecture—such as Paid Veronese was fond of introducing in his pictures—with here and there a peacock or other gorgeous bird perched aloft, and in each a Greek inscription, which the distance and the dim light prevented me from reading. In the pavement of the floor are pieces of pavonazetto and fragments of pilasters, which, probably, once faced the walls.

In the precinct of the mosque is a pulpit, which disputes with that in St. Sophia the honour of having been St. Paul's. This is of white marble, larger and more elaborate than the other, but almost as rude in workmanship. It has been intended to stand against a wall, and is ascended by a winding staircase of six steps. Its height is six feet three inches. On the top is a very small space for the preacher to stand or sit, and no appearance of balustrade to prevent him falling off. In the pulpit in St. Sophia's, still used by the Turks, the preacher sits, and there is a cushion for his accommodation. This is only used as a plaything for children, half a dozen of whom were clustered about it. On the outside are three niches, rounded at top in the shape of a shell, and divided by a little column and foliated capital. In each niche is a rude, misshapen figure of a barbarian soldier in trousers and Phrygian cap, reminding one of the figures which stand over the Arch of Constantine at Rome, and were stolen, page 315 as I have before said, from the Arch of Trajan. But this is a ruder and, probably, a much later work, and over each capital an eagle in low relief. One of the capitals had been freshly broken off: a piece of vandalism, of which I was sorry to hear that an Englishman—or, rather, an Irishman—had been guilty. He was in command of one of Her Majesty's ships, and ought to have set a better example. This pulpit, if we assign to it the latest possible date, is a precious relic of Christian antiquity. If it had been, as this Captain O'Vandal, doubtless, supposed it to be—the pulpit of St. Paul—his offence would have been not merely barbarous, but sacrilegious. We had some difficulty in getting admission to the mosque, which was the church of St. Demetrius. It was now nearly one o'clock, and the time when every good Mussulman takes a snooze—as regularly as he says his prayers. We kicked violently at the hodja's door, and at last succeeded in wakening, to a certain extent, his beadleship's son; a fat, handsome, heavy-eyed youth of seventeen, who put his head out of the window and told us to wait, which we did, while he withdrew apparently to finish a dream that he was about. At last, he came down and opened the church-door, and forthwith sat down on a step with his head against a pillar and resumed his slumber, leaving us to examine the place at our leisure. We found ourselves in a spacious building, more like the type of a Western church than any we had yet seen, with nave and double aisles, triforium, and clerestory. The triforium, or women's gallery extended over the outer aisle on each side. The columns were of verde antique, and a white, blue-veined marble. There were also four columns of red Egyptian granite; all, no doubt, spoils of various temples of pagan Thessalonica. The church was paved throughout with marble of a blueish tint. On the northern wall of the nave is a monument in the Renaissance style, with a long Greek inscription commemorating a certain Spadrone, a Greek, who left his money to found an institution for the education of his countrymen. The date is i.e. 6989, reckoned, in the usual Byzantine fashion, from the creation of the world. The date of the Christian era is, according to this mode of counting, 5508, deducting which, we get for the date of the monument, 1480 A.D., which is remarkable as showing that the Turks left to the Christians at Salonica, as at Constantinople, the possession of their churches long after the Conquest. Salonica has been continuously in the possession of the Turks since its capture by Murad II., in 1430.

There is a well in the church (a very common case) of pure cold water. We can scarcely doubt that the same well had been protected by a pagan temple, as it was afterwards by a Christian church, and is now by a Mahometan mosque. In these countries water is the first necessity, and the crowning luxury; water is fertility, abundance, life; the want of water is famine, desolation, death. What wonder if so precious a thing were attributed to the popular imagination to a special bounty of a God or saint—if temples were erected to serve at once for the safe keeping of the treasure and as memorials of the gift!

The church, too, possesses another treasure in the grave of St. Demetrius himself, illustrious for many miracles, and a place of pilgrimage to this day. The Turks do not interfere with a practice which their own customs sanction, and which brings them in a considerable profit. The Turkish hodja is paid for trimming the lamp which is kept always burning over the grave. There is no inscription on the stone which is supposed to cover the saint's bones. Once a year on the feast day, the little vault is filled from morning to night with crowds of worshippers, whose hot breath, condensed into drops on the cold stone, is supposed to be the sweat of the saint's bones miraculously exuding, and of sovereign efficacy if rubbed on ulcers, or any ailing parts of the body.