A Tour Up the Straits, from Gibraltar to Constantinople: With the Leading Events in the Present War Between the Austrians, Russians, and the Turks, to the Commencement of the Year 1789Sutherland, David, Captain
History
A Tour Up the Straits, from Gibraltar to Constantinople: With the Leading Events in the Present War Between the Austrians, Russians, and the Turks, to the Commencement of the Year 1789
Sutherland, David, Captain
Mediterranean Region -- Description and travel; Russo-Turkish War, 1787-1792
Delos is about five leagues off, Naxos two, and Antiparos about the same
distance. In the last there is a cavern, which is reckoned one of the
greatest wonders of the Archipelago; but as a natural curiosity, it is
by no means equal to Saint Michael's Cave at Gibraltar. A multitude of
names are cut near the entrance. Lady Craven's is among the latest.
Tuesday, October 30th.
Sailed from Paros, with an intention of visiting Delos in our way to
Smyrna, but the wind changing, we stood to the north-west, profiting by
this opportunity, to supply the ship with wood.
Wednesday, October 31st.
Anchored between the Island of Longa and the Coast of Immortal Attica.
But my heart bleeds whilst I survey the sad change it has undergone. In
vain do I search for the descendants of those rustic patriots, whose
valour enabled Miltiades and Themistocles to overthrow the Persian host
by sea and land, or for those well cultivated fields, where art
concealed the frugality of nature. Alas! far as the best glass can
reach, no sign of a dwelling can be seen; and the country, for want of
inhabitants, lies entirely neglected.
After almost despairing of meeting a human being, I one day fell in with
two men grazing a considerable number of horses, which I imagined was a
nursery for the Turkish Cavalry; but on mentioning this to the Greeks
who attended them, they answered no; that the only use they were of was
to tread out the corn in summer; in return for which they grazed them
from place to place in winter. I also found a small chapel, not bigger
than an hermitage, to which the people from the interior country, on
particular occasions, resort. Part of the neighbourhood is covered with
wood, which any one may take who chooses to cut it. Longa, the once
celebrated Island of Helen, is entirely depopulated, and produces
nothing. Our pilot calls this Port Maundré. It has the same advantage I
remarked at Modon, a passage at each end of the island.
If you can believe that I am within a day's journey of Athens, how will
you envy my being so near the mother of the arts and sciences, and what
will you say when I tell you that I did not go there. But be assured it
was not through want of exertion; but from the impracticability of
getting there by land in these hostile times. But whilst the people were
wooding, I went in a boat to the Promontory of Sunium, to see the
remains of the Temple of Minerva, which I take to be one of the most
ancient remaining in Greece. If we may credit Homer, it was contemporary
with Troy; for in the third book of the Odyssey, Nestor, after relating
the seduction of Clytemnestra, passing to the return of the Greeks,
says,
"But when to Sunium's sacred point we came,
Crown'd with the Temple of the Athenian Dame,
Atrides Pilot, Phrontes, there expired, &c."
In some ground lately opened I found a human scull, and some other burnt
bones. What antiquarian will object to their being those of this
ill-fated pilot?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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