spirit of these expeditions; indeed he might have led one to suppose
that he would willingly have agreed to pass his life in a boat. On this
particular occasion they were coasting along Thessaly--those shores so
beautiful to look at, but of which the beauty, when the mists of night
descend upon them, reek with the breath of death. They proceeded
cautiously; and as their labours were protracted into new days and
weeks, and none of their little band had been stricken, they began to
hope, and perhaps to believe themselves seasoned and safe. The time for
them to rejoin the ship at last arrived, and not a man had been ill. One
man did indeed complain in the morning, but he laid in his oar, and they
hoped would soon be better. Presently another was forced to claim the
same exemption, and another. In short, they reached the ship with great
difficulty, and as by miracle, and not one of the party could mount the
side. They were all hoisted in, and in a few hours the only man of the
party who lived was my friend. In the pretty island of Sciathos is a
tomb, wherein sleep the whole party save that one. I have stood by this,
and read in the sad story of its inscription a sufficient warning on the
subject of marsh _malaria_. Once or twice I have come in its way, but
never willingly, and happily always without calamitous result. Once only
I have slept within its problematical range, and that was off that
pestiferous bit of coast near Epidaurus, and I fancy at a season when
the marshes had not their steam up.
We had among us a lesson, but not of this melancholy character, on the
absurdity of attempting to brave the daylight heat of summer. It is so
natural for an Englishman to look upon the mere natives of any place to
which he may come in his travels, as cheats and ignoramuses, that we, as
a matter of course, and most complacently, admitted the natives _en
masse_ and every where to that rating. In the course of our vagaries we
stumbled on the pretty island of Mytilene, in the very piping hours of
summer. Very cool and pleasant did it look to us shipmen, hanging down
its umbrageous olive groves nearly to the water's edge--and very
pleasant should we have found it to be, had we been content to defer our
landing till the authorised hour of eventide. But besides that the place
looked so inviting, we felt bound to give way to a little enthusiasm at
this approach to the birthplace of the lady who gave Horace the model of
"Jam satis terris nivis atque dirae" &c.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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