TRAVELLERS IN GREECE
TRAVELLING can be an art as well as a hobby. Travellers, like artists, can have their styles, their theories and their ideals. They need not be mere photographers who expose their mental plates to impres- sions. They can let their minds react upon what they perceive ; and in this, I think, lies the difference between travellers and tourists.
Books of travel are sometimes the dullest of works, but there is hardly one which does not contain some hidden crystal. Even in the bed of the turbid stream of that genus vu/gare—the itinerant journalist in the Balkans—something sparkling is always to be found hidden away under the mud and, as often as not, unknown to the author.
But how rarely does one read a book of travel which is uniformly urbane in style, in which the author never loses his temper? Perhaps Herodotus alone deserves the palm. Compare him with Dodwell who travelled in Greece in the early nineteenth century. Poor Dodwell ! his were distinctly not the days of the " Dawn of Culture " ; they were dull, foggy days, with the dank mists of victor- ious Islam still hanging over the plains and vales of Greece, so that men moved darkly with their heads and shoulders barely raised into the clearer air. He found the natives little to his taste and reacted violently against them. " I feel myself imperiously bound," he says, " to prefer the plain statements of impartial truth to every other consideration, and consequently I shall not scruple to declare that I have never found any Turkish insolence or brutality so disgusting as the little despicable pride and low impertinence of the contemptible and filthy inhabitants of Poros." We read on, for there must be some reason for this outburst. " It was with great difficulty," he says, " that we could prevail upon a merchant (at Poros) to let us pass the night in one of his lumber rooms ; and which we did not effect until he made us wait three hours at his door, fasting and cold." Herodotus cannot have been welcome everywhere, but we find no passage like this in his Histories. But Dodwell, after all, chastises only the miserable islanders of Poros and still retains his enthusiasm for the rest of Greece.
Yet travellers in Greece have not always found the mists of foreign domination so suffocating. A breath of the morning air blows through the narrative of one old Elizabethan, John Dallam the organ-maker, whose diary has survived. The occasion of his voyage was in 1599 and 1600, when he was sent by Queen Elizabeth with several assistants to present to the " Grand Sinyor " a marvellous organ, a gift from the Queen. He went by ship from Gravesend round by Gibraltar to Zante, which was then in Venetian hands. He reaches the island after sundry adventures with piratical barques. In harbour Dallam conceives the plan of climbing a mountain near the shore called Scopo, in order that he may get a good view over- the island. " I made a kinde of vow to myselfe," he says, " that assowne as I sett foute on shore I would nether eate nor drinke untill I had bene on the tope tharof." So he set off with Myghell Watson, his joiner, and Edward Hale, " a Cotchman." Half way up the hill they " sawe upon a stone of the hill above a man goinge with a greate staffe on his shoulder, havinge a' clubed end, and on his heade a cape which seemes to hus to have five horns standinge outryghte, and a greate heard of gootes and shepe folloed him "—indeed a fearsome sight for an untutored Londoner, fresh from Gravesend. " My frende Myghell Watson, when he saw this, he seemed to be verrie fearfull, and would have perswaded us to go no farther, telling us that surly those that did inhabite thare weare savidge men." Even when they found out that it was only a harmless shepherd and not a Cyclops, Watson for one " swore that he would goo no farther, come of it what would. Edward Hale sayd somethinge fayntly that he would not leave me, but se the end." So Hale and Dallam went on, arriving ulti- mately at a house where they were warmly entertained, given wine and welcomed by the Greek peasants, though Ned Hayle's solemn warnings tempered the pleasure of the repast. They returned " verie merrily " to where they had left Watson, " who all this whyle has layen in a bushe," and told him of their successful excursion.
Later they left Zante and went to Scanderoune (Alexandretta) and so up to the Dardanelles. Near the entrance of the straits Dallam again went ashore and saw " the rewins of the wales and housis in Troye, and from thence broughte a peece of a whyte marble piller the which I broke with myne owne handes, havinge a good hamer which my mate Harvie did carrie ashore for the same purpose ; and I broughte this peece of marble to London." Travellers seem much alike in all ages.
Later still he goes to Constantinople and presents the organ to the Sultan. It plays automatically and delights the audience, as indeed it might, for, says Dallam, " first the clocke strouke 22 ; than the chime of 16 bells went of, and played a songe of 4 parts. That beinge done tow personagis which stood upon to corners of the second stone houldinge tow silver trumpetes in their handes, did lifte them to theire heades and sounded a tantarra. Than the muzicke went off, and the orgon played a song of 5 partes twyse over. In the tope of the orgon, beinge 16 foute hie, did stand a holly bushe full of blake birds and thrushis, which at the end of the muzick did singe and shake theire wynges."
His voyage back was interesting. He went to Volo in Thessaly and thence overland to Lamia and so over Mount Oeta and Parnassos to Lepanto. This during December was no light undertaking. Added to the dangers of the weather were those of the road, for they were " doged or followed by 4 stout villans, that weare Turkes." But they had a trusty guide—" our drugaman or interpreter was an Inglishe man, borne in Chorlaye in Lancashier ; his name Finche. He was also in religion a perfit Turke, but he was our trustie frende." Imagine the indignation of virtuous Dodwell ! compose a stanza of Childe Harold on the subject, full of aphorism and sentiment ! Dallam is content enough that the man was " our trustie frende."
There is kindness and geniality in John Dallam and no false sentiment. He braves the unknown " indigenes," knocks chips off Troy, faces the Sultan, climbs Parnassos and finds nothing to cavil at in Finche the renegade. There is no moralizing, no peevishness, and at last he gets home " beinge verrie glad that we weare once againe upon Inglishe ground."
Less than half a century after John Dallam wrote his refreshing narrative another traveller covered much the same ground, but in- a vastly different spirit. His name was William Lithgow. His narrative is preserved in his :— = Total discourse of the rare adventures and painfull perigrina- tions of long nineteen yeares travayles . . . perfited by three dear* bought voyages in surveighing of forty-eight Kingdoms ancient and modem ; twenty-one Rei-publickes, ten absolute principalities, with two hundred islands."
This sturdy- rascal -travelled always - with statistics in view, and his occasion of departure was hastY and due to domestic reasons which he does not reveal. He reached Greece by way of -Zante, like Dallam. He has little to say of the island or its inhabitants beyond the fact that " the ilanders are Greekes, a kind of subtile people and great dissemblers." Greece for the most part left him cold. "In all this countrey of Greece," he says, " I could finde nothing to answer the famous relations given by ancient authors of the excellency of that land but the name only ; the barbarousnesse of Turkes and Time having defaced all the Monuments of Antiquity." Lesbos he compares unfavourably with the Orkneys and Shetlands quite in the Dodwell manner. We seek a personal reason. He was there with some Greek sailors : " I being the stranger," he says bitterly, " was exposed by the untoward Greekes to stand Centinall every night on the top of a high Promontore, it being the dead time of a snowy and frosty winter." Like Dallam he visited Troy, but -without the " hamer " that was carried by that happy vandal for purposes of hasty souvenir hunting. All he got from Troy was " three pieces of rusted money," of which he later gave two as a gift to the brothers of the Duke of Florence.
Dallams, Lithgows and Dodwells abound in all ages ; which shall we be when we go travelling ? STANLEY CASSON.
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