MR. TOZER'S "ISLANDS OF THE lEGEAN."* So little is Imown,
or rather, so little is generally read of the islands of the lEgean Sea, that the appearance in a popular form of a work so thorough and so interesting as Mr. Tozer's should be very welcome to students of both ancient and modern history and geography. Mr. Tozer himself modestly professes to give but a sketch of the subject with which he deals, and for fuller information refers his readers to the works of Ross, Pashley, Couze, and Mr. Bent, to which he acknowledges his many obligations. Doubtless they will find in them the separate parts of the subject more ex- haustively dealt with, but we would venture to say that most readers will find this one volume of Mr. Tozer's quite comprehensive enough. In it he has comprised the results of three journeys—one undertaken in 1874, in which he visited the chief islands of the Cyclades, and Crete ; the second in 1886, devoted to the islands which lie off the coast of Asia Minor, from Lesbos to Rhodes ; and the third in 1889, to the islands in the Thracian Sea, which have been less visited, and are even less known, than the other groups of the Greek Archipelago. Of his more personal experiences as a traveller, the author says little or nothing. Contrary to the ordinary method of modern travellers in Europe, who, as a rule, describe in minute detail how they were lodged and how fed, Mr. Tozer hardly spares a word to either his food or lodging, but leaves the badness of both to our imagination—and how had they can be, only those who have travelled in those parts of the world can know. As to the means of loco- motion, he seems to have been for the most part dependent upon sailing-boats and at the mercy of the most changeable winds in all the world. Even the steamers which ply between some of the islands and the main coast could not be depended upon to reach their destination, except in fair weather, owing to the dangerous want of harbourage which is characteristic of nearly all the island coasts. Mr. Tozer tells a story of a resident of Smyrna who left that place with the intention of passing Christmas at Rhodes, and after making several voyages between Smyrna and Alexandria without ever being able to land at his destination, ultimately reached Rhodes in time for Easter. The author appears to have been more for- tunate; but we should judge, from his description, that the lEgean fully deserves the bad character that ancient writers have given it. Of the Cyclades, the most interesting from a historical point of view are undoubtedly Delos and Naxos. Delos, the reputed birthplace of Apollo, once so rich in shrines and temples, is now inhabited by one solitary shepherd, with nothing but its rains to show its former greatness. Naxos, besides its classical history, is especially interesting as having been for three hundred and sixty years the head-quarters of the Duchy of Naxos,—that is to say, of the Venetian supremacy in those seas. Speaking of Venice, the author remarks, what is true enough, that the grandeur and magnificence of her enterprise are rather apt to blind us to the disastrous results which attended it; in his opinion, the Venetians have only been second to the Turks in the injurious effects that their influence brought upon their dependencies in the East. Of Crete, the scene of so many insurrections and terrible massacres, the author has a great deal to say. He describes
• The Islands of the lEgean. By the Rev. Henry Fanshawe Tozer, ILA. F.R.G.S. Oxford : Clarendon Prez%
the condition of the country when he saw it, in 1874, to be most wretched, and though it has greatly improved since that time, and some of the most crying abuses have been remedied, its condition to-day can hardly be called satisfactory. Of the people Mr. Tozer speaks very highly; so we may suppose that either they were much maligned by ancient writers, or that their character has materially altered since the day when a Cretan was a synonym for a liar and knave.
In Lesbos, the exact position of its ancient city, Mytilene, seems to be still a matter of doubt. It was here that took place the famous siege described at some length by Thucydides. The history of the modern town is, as the author says, 4‘ literally written on its face," for side by side on the same wall he found a Byzantine eagle, a Frankish coat-of-arms, and a Turkish inscription. Chios interests one chiefly from its unfortunate record. It was only of late years that one of the most terrible earthquakes of modern times took place there, and reduced its chief town, Scio, to a heap of ruins. In 1822, during the Greek War of Independence, it was even more terribly visited,—forty-six flourishing villages were reduced to ashes ; some twenty-five thousand of its inhabitants were killed, and forty-five thousand made slaves of. Three months after this wholesale massacre, only eighteen hundred Greeks were left in the whole of the island. In the time when the Delphic Oracle was the conscience of Greece, they spoke of the " Lemnian deeds" as we speak to-day of 46 Turkish atrocities ;" but the deed that the Lemnians were so anxious to make atonement for did not even approach in barbarity this outrage of the nineteenth century.
There is hardly an island in the Greek Archipelago that is not full of interest to the antiquarian and historian. In Samos, the author visited, and to a great extent explored, the famous tunnel of Eupalinos, which Herodotus describes as one of the greatest engineering works of his time. Indeed, a tunnel of nearly a mile in length, bored from one side of the mountain to the other through the solid rock, is no small proof of the engineering skill of a people who, according to the account of Herodotus, could boast of two other works as least as great. The traditions which surround the name of St. John in Patmos have increased and been localised after the fashion of most traditions, so that the traveller may now be shown the very cleft in the cave through which the Revelations were received, the stone which served St. John for a pillow, and the spot at which he overthrew Kynops the magician. What are more authentic are the famous manuscripts that are still contained in the library of the great Monastery of St. John. Three hundred years before Christ, Rhodes was famous for its commerce and its arts ; but the magnificence of which Strabo speaks is almost forgotten in comparison with its more modern renown as the stronghold of the Knights of St. John. While nothing re- mains of ancient grandeur, the medimval fortress still stands almost untouched.
At Lemnos, which the author visited first of the Northern Islands, he found the same connection kept up with the wealthy Greek community of Alexandria as at Leros in the South. Both islands have overcome the natural poverty of their land by their commercial enterprise. Here, too, Mr. Tozer made a careful examination of an old superstition which has survived almost from pre-historic times till to-day. The red Lemnian earth that healed the wound of Philoctetes, that was mentioned by Pliny and Galen, had even until lately been extracted with infinite rites by both Christians and Mussulmans, and used as a drug. Analysis showed that it contained no peculiar component parts, and already faith seems inclined to listen to the voice of science, and abandon one of its oldest traditions. In the matter of superstitions, Mr. Tozer mentions another that is very prevalent among the Greek Islands, that of the vampires. He would have found a very similar superstition among the Christians of Macedonia and Eastern Roumelia, who on the death of a relative take care to lock every cupboard and turn upside-down every jar and receptacle in the house, to prevent the departing spirit from taking refuge and remaining among them.
The only fault, if it is necessary to find any fault at all, that can be found with Mr. Tozer's book, is that it contains so much information in so small a space, and gives one the im- pression of being compressed to the utmost limit. But that is rather a virtue than a fault.
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