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waves from which they appear to offer an asylum. I have not yet told you because we have but this instant learnt
the name of our friends ship is the San Nicola (St Nicholas) and his own Giovanni (John) Patereschi or some
name. We are now trudging together (8 o'clock P.M.) near enough for us to see and hear our neighbours at their prayers.
We have been mutually treating one another with Music; if ours was but so so, theirs, Italian as it is , was infinitely worse.
We have been all day long in a situation tantalizing at least to me rambling amidst a labyrinth of islands, without
landing on any one. I have just been viewing with a glass an odd hill like a sugar-loaf thick spangled with buildings
from top to bottom, and crowned with one which from its superior size and commanding situation I should suppose
to be a Castle. This was on the Isle of Serphanto.
Friday Oct. 21. This morning Capt. Brine treated us with an excursion to on the Isle of Scio: the company, Mr Griffiths, Mr Scheider
a Russian Merchant of German extraction whom we took in at Leghorn) the Venetian Captain, young Jack (Randal) whom you
saw aboard, and myself. We got into the boat about 10, and were on board again a little after 2: it took us about an hour & a half
to row thither, and about an hour to sail back. Our landing was upon a fine sandy beach, about a mile from a town which we
clamber'd up to as fast as our legs would carry us over a road in some places steep and every where roughnea'd with loose stones.
What The name of the town I could not collect with certainty, Laddea, or Taddea or Thaddea. A description very exact or copious
cannot reasonably be expected from 1 1/2 hours stay part of which was taken up in merchandizing, and other part in harbourising.
A beautiful palm not above 100 yards from the landing was the first object that interested us till before we came near enough to take
part in the animated scenes that exhibited themselves as we approached. We found 2 or 3 houses close to the shore, in the neighbourhood
of which were 7 or 8 persons variously occupied. Two me boys we took for our guides, through the intervention of the Venetian
Captain who spoke the modern Greek with fluency. The Streets such of them as we saw, and we were told they were the
principal, were about the width of the narrowest part of Shire-Lane: the houses built of such sort of stone as the soil under
afforded, without a particle of mortar, seemed in general to be 2 stories high: in many places the upper storys of a house
of one side of the street was connected with the correspondent story of the other side by an arch; and the space thus coverd
in would seemed in some of the streets to be equal to that which was left uncoverd. The windows were holes left in the
walls: glass we did not see an atom of in the whole town: yet every house had some ornamental carving in the stone-work
over the door, elegantly designed and neatly executed, without attempting however to imitate flowers or fruit foliage or any other production of Nature.
The rooms were as small in proportion as the streets were narrow: we did not go into any of them, but from such glances
as we could catch as we walked on we could discover no other furniture but a few stools. All the people we saw were Greek
we were told there was scarce a Turk upon the island: one of the first persons we observed was a most comely venerable old man with
a long curling beard as white as snow: I could have fancied him one of the 7 sages. The young women were several of them very
pretty; a good set of teeth and black eyes were by no means rare among them; in particular we observed a girl seemingly about
9 or 10 years old with eyes of the deepest black we had ever seen. All the people viewed us with attention, none with displeasure,
and most of them with remarkable complacency. Many of them asked what countrymen we were, and the intelligence
of our being mostly English seemed to give very general satisfaction: Some "calloo", "calloo", that's well, that's well, was the word
they made use of to express it. Some of the women threw us down flowers from the upper story. An old woman took hold of my hand
and kissed it; then offerd me hers. I thought she meant to have the compliment returned; I accordingly took hold of hers and was lifting
it up to my lips when a kind of laugh on her part as well as on that of the bystanders, together with the word "denaro", Italian for
money, advertised me of my mistake. This was the only sign of begging we any of us observed. I made the best signs I could to give
her to understand I had none of their money about me, which was the truth, and she was satisfied. The Captain bought to treat the
Cabbin with some almonds, raisins, melons and oranges, some of the latter as ripe as you have them when they first come in
in England, others in a state of sowerness fit for punch.. It cost him in the whole about a crown including porterage and
guides. Fresh grapes, pears and peaches we could hear no tidings of; a woman offer'd him half a dozen indifferent looking
apples for 4 paras: (you know what a para is) about a halfpenny a piece. This he refused as exorbitant: I begged him
to lend me the money that I might buy them: but as before this time he had spied a breeze which summoned us on board
again with all possible expedition, he could not allow me time to compleat the bargain. Not a creature that we saw had
any such thing on as a stocking: a few of the best dressed among the men but none of the women had slippers: shoes and
their appendage buckles nobody expect on a Greek island. Few of either sex but had some sort of linnen garment; but generally ragged
and dirty, and universally coarse. A little valley by which we returned afforded some pretty little gardens: in which I saw
more flowers cultivated as such than I find observed, a few palaces excepted, in France and Italy put together. French
& African Marygolds made the most conspicuous figure. We saw besides tobacco in flower and in seed, the egg plant
in fruit the purple kind such as is eat under the name of aubergines in the south of France and under the name
of in Italy, Oranges, Lemons, Olives, Jujubes (a paltry fruit a little like a very small date) various sorts of melons
and pumpkins, not to mention Blackberries which were growing wild there as with us. We saw Mulberry trees &
Almond trees; but no fruit on either, the fruit being all gather'd in as well as from the fig-trees. The Mulberries I
suppose are cultivated for silk: and where that is the case the tree is so checked by the continual depredations committed
on its leaves that you seldom see any fruit: indeed the fruit of the sort which is cultivated for the sake of its leaves, is
white and good for little. Cotton we saw in the houses, but none growing: some women presented us with some pods of it:
picking it seems to constitute the chief occupation of the inhabitants. I observed a man with his hands stained blue. Upon
enquiry I learnt as I suspected that he was a Dyer. I should wish to have peeped in to his Dye-house; but we
were then hastening back, and it was a considerable distance behind us. In one of the Streets we saw one side of a Chapel
which was in ruins; not from age, however, though it seemed far from modern, but as we supposed from violence. The inside was cover'd
with paintings al fresco, chiefly portraits of Saints; with legends which I had no time to attempt decyphering: the letters
were capitals which upon a hasty glance seemed like the antient: the numerals however which we observ'd over the
doors of private houses were not the antient Greek, but the Arabick, as ours are.
Saturday Oct. 22 11 o'clock. I am writing in the midst of a storm: the wind being right against us we were forced to turn tail on Smyrna
about 3 hours ago: we are trying to make a harbour called Olivis on the Island of Mitilin. The Capt. is grave we are in some danger.
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Identifier: | JB/540/208/002 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 540.
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1785-10-11 |
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208 |
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Jeremy Bentham |
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