Each in his self-formed sphere of light or gloom? Henceforth, while pondering the fierce deeds then done, As though I corpses saw and walked the tomb "." Farewell to thee, noble Salvador, thou false traditionary Istone. We must down the straits dreaming Pheacian dreams from the Odyssey. Such dreams as those may well last to Ithaca. Soon after leaving Corfu we passed the island conjectured to be Sybota, the station of the Corinthian fleet. Here again was a perplexing piece of topography; for it certainly cannot with accuracy be said to be opposite even to the harbor of Old Corfu. Still no other island is. That island, however, has no more title to the honors of Sybota than St. Salvador to those of Mount Istone. We passed Paxos and Antipaxos; but the hot and heavy-breathing sirocco took away the enjoyment of the voyage. On the shore we saw Parga, Ali Pasha's stronghold, with its white houses on the declivity. Soon after we were off the Albanian town of Prevesa, and then passed the mouth of the Sinus Ambracius, now the Gulf of Arta, where the battle of Actium was fought. We glided past Santa Maura, and ran between Calamo and Ithaca; leaving Cephalonia on the right. Ithaca was gloomy, indistinct, and misty in the evening; not the ενδείελος Ιθάκη of Homer, the Ithaca of pure and fair twilights, the land of cool, sea-born even sun. ings, which to a continental Greek would look like a mote of dusky gold in 'the radiance of the sinking I felt an unwonted stir, almost an awe, in gazing up to the dusky cliffs of Ithaca. But again another beautiful note was struck from the same rough lyre whose admonitious had been obeyed at Corfu. Now it sounded an excuse for my enthusiasm, and made it Christian. "Why, wedded to the Lord, still yearns my heart Be named man's tomb and splendid record-stone, At five in the morning we dropped anchor off Patras. The morning haze cleared away; behind us were the flats of Missolonghi, the mouth of the Gulf of Lepanto on our left, and before us the magnificent curve of the Morea, terminating with Kastel Tornese. The Bay of Patras is very fine indeed 3 Lyra Apostolica, p. 53. from the bold front presented by the mountains on the opposite side of the Gulf of Lepanto. Patras itself is but a poor town, yet it received a fictitious interest from being the first place where we trod the veritable earth of Greece. The ruins of the old Turkish castle are somewhat interesting, with occasional fig-trees in the ruined courts, and the whole luxuriantly overgrown with African marigolds. We went to see the Cave of St. Andrew, his traditionary burial-place and well; and our Greek servant was very urgent with us to drink of the Apostle's well, that we might not miss a blessing from St. Andrew. The Greek population of Patras contrasts very pleasingly with the islanders of Corfu. They are handsome, clean, erect, and singularly graceful in all their movements. They seemed to spend the day in hanging about the streets with a good-natured indolence. Here, as well as at Corfu, we observed the doors of the Jews marked on the doorposts and lintels with the blood of the paschal lamb*; and the mark was always made in the shape of the Cross, which is interesting; for the death of crucifixion is a most unlikely death now, and so the mark seems a witness against themselves. It is Christ's • Or rather the roast meat which they use instead of it, roasted in a peculiar manner. The Jews of Daghistan beneath the Circassian mountains are said to be the only ones who sacrifice the proper paschal lamb; or use the old method of circumcision, the rest of the Jews following the method introduced after the time of the Maccabees. death lying at their doors. It is a mute echo of the awful, prophetic, self-invoked curse: "His blood be on us and on our children." Patras is a place of some importance in history. It was one of the old Achaian cities; and the highest mountain behind it, Mount Voidhia, occupies the most likely place for the ancient Mount Panachaicum. It was colonized by Augustus after the battle of Actium. It saw the battle of Lepanto, and played a prominent part in the War of Independence. But the part of the history of Patras, which has sunk most deeply into the minds of the people, is the siege it underwent in the eighth century in the times of the Iconoclast emperors. A considerable portion of the Peloponnesus was then occupied by some predatory bands of Sclavonians, and they in conjunction with the African Saracens, who were invading the country by sea, formed the siege of Patras. In such a conjuncture the inhabitants needed more than earthly succor, and while with the courage of despair in men who fought for hearths and homes they were cutting down the Sclavonians and forcing the Saracens to their ships, they saw in their front ranks St. Andrew the Apostle leading the charge and ensuring the victory. The Saracens sailed away, and the Sclavonians were made hewers of wood and drawers of water to the church of St. Andrew in Patras. As we stood in the broken courts of the Turkish castle on the hill, we saw some singularly magnificent effects of haze, shadow, and ragged storm-cloud on the opposite mountains. It was here too that the excessive clearness and beauty of the atmosphere, as well as the brilliant coloring, of Greece were first displayed to us. Spring comes in Greece with a multitudinous retinue of flowers, of aromatic scent as well as bright hue. The swallows, too, of which we had seen none in Lombardy, were here filling the air with blithe twitterings. There was something very beautiful in the old Greek custom of boys catching some of the earliest swallows, and going with them from house to house, as Christmas carollers, or the garlanded kings and queens of May-day among ourselves, demanding presents of food and dainties, boyhood's earliest and merriest earnings, in return for a sight of the first swallows, a pleasant surety of springtide. From house to house with a swallow in their hands they sang a quaint song, demanding largess with somewhat of a rude, railing sportiveness. The song is given in one of the common schoolbooks from Athenæus. I would I could have heard it sung in Patras, for the swallows were but newly come. Ενθ', ἦνθε χελιδὼν καλὰς ὥρας ἄγοισα, ἐπὶ νῶτα μέλαινα. παλαθὰν σὺ προκύκλει οἴνω τε δέπαστρον, D d |