Travels and Discoveries in the Levant/Volume 1/Letter XII
XII.
Having been requested by Mr. Kerr, H.M.'s Consul at Eliodes, to act in his place during his absence in England, I left Blunt in charge of Mytilene, and came here by the Austrian steamer a few days ago. On arriving, I found Mr. Kerr as eager to leave Rhodes as I was to visit an island which promised so rich a field of archæological research. His impatience was not unnatural, for he has now vegetated at Cyprus and Rhodes for twelve long- years without ever asking for a furlough, and his mind, naturally an active one, is weary of the petty intrigues and cabals which constitute the very essence of Levantine society in small places, and which a Consul can hardly keep clear of without extreme discretion and forbearance.
After the rough life we have been leading at Mytilene, I was not sorry to instal myself in a house to which the residence of an English family has imparted an air of comfort, such as our bachelor ménage at Mytilene never attained to. Instead of being dependent on the tender mercies of my dragoman for daily food, I find myself waited on by three servants who have been taught to minister to British ways and wants under the careful training of Mrs. Kerr, and one of whom actually speaks broken English, and knows how to lay the cloth for dinner. Judging from first impressions, I should imagine Rhodes to be a much more agreeable residence for an Englishman than Mytilene. Here there is a real Frank quarter, where you hear as much French and Italian spoken in the streets as Greek; there is too in the manners of the people generally a tinge of European civilization which I have seen nowhere else in the Archipelago.
From the circumstance that the trade of Rhodes is principally in the hands of Frank merchants, and that this beautiful island has always been a favourite place of residence for French, Italians, Maltese, and other emigrants from Europe, Latin Christianity has an ascendancy here which would not be allowed in islands like Mytilene, where the Greeks discourage as much as possible all foreign settlers, especially those of the Romish faith.
At this season Rhodes is arrayed in all the freshness of luxuriant spring. The scenery round the town has a peculiar beauty. The land is formed in a succession of natural terraces down to the sea; in every view the palm-tree is seen against the horizon, reminding the Englishman in what latitude he is, which otherwise might be forgotten, from the extraordinary mildness of the temperature. In every direction I find long and silent lanes, stretching away for miles through the suburbs between high garden-walls, from the top of which ivy and other shrubs hang over in rich profusion. The air is scented with orange-flowers, the earth is covered with abundant crops. The houses are all built of squared stone, with flat roofs. Many of them have a strange tenantless aspect; for Rhodes is a place which has been long wasting away with that atrophy which is consuming the Ottoman empire. The town is far too large for its inhabitants, who are huddled away into holes and corners. About a year ago an earthquake threw down one of the fine old towers. Its ruins fell in one of the principal streets, blocking it up. Not a stone has been touched by the Turks, and the ruins may perhaps lie there till another earthquake shakes them up again.
After having been jostled by the throng of mules and market-people in the long, crooked, miry streets of Mytilene, it is pleasant to walk in a place where for miles you meet nothing but a stray donkey, where no sound is heard but the echo of your own footsteps on a pavement of pebbles, the most beautifully clean that I ever trod on. All the court-yards and many of the streets in the Frank quarter are paved with round shingle-stones from the beach, in many places worked in very neat patterns, which we might well imitate in England.
I delight in the distant views, which are on a much grander scale than those of Mytilene. Looking at the map, you will see that the opposite shores of Lycia and Caria are much broken by bays and headlands, which form a magnificent jagged sky-line, sweeping round in a kind of panorama towards the south, where the vast forms of snow-capped mountains come into view. The sea is perpetually agitated, sometimes by tremendous gales, and has not that look of molten metal which it has generally in the Archipelago. The only signs here of human activity are the wind- mills, which revolve eternally before my windows. They stand in a long row by the sea-shore, and the effect of a sunset seen through their gaunt and skeleton-like arms is most picturesque.
Ever since my arrival I have been engaged in a variety of consular affairs, which, though often wearisome in detail, are not without interest, because the minute study of such local matters gives an insight into the state of society in this part of the Archipelago.
The other day I witnessed a singular scene, very Corsican in character. A native of the island of Cassos had been condemned to death for a murder committed two years ago in Alexandria. The trial took place here; there was good reason for believing that the real murderer had been let off and the wrong one convicted; so the case was reported to Constantinople, and there were hopes of a reprieve through the intervention of Colonel Rose with the Porte. While the case was ending, the eldest son of the Greek who had been assassinated, thirsting for vengeance, went up to Constantinople and obtained a firman ordering the immediate execution of the criminal. He arrived with the fatal warrant and presented it to the Caimakam, who is now acting here as Governor in the absence of the Pasha of Rhodes.
The hopes which we had entertained were gone; but in concert with the Greek and Russian Yice-Consuls, I tried to persuade the Caimakam into a few days' delay. Now the Caimakam was a, fat stuffy little man, a sort of Turkish alderman; very good-natured, fussy, and nervous, very anxious to oblige the English Consul, very much afraid of all responsibility; so he referred the matter to the Mejlis or municipal council; and to the Mejlis I went. As I have mentioned in a former letter, a Consul only goes to this council on great occasions. In ordinary matters he sends his dragoman, for fear that the Turks, by constantly holding intercourse Avith him, should discover that he is but a mere mortal like themselves, and so take to despising him. I found there present the whole family of the murdered man. This is the usual custom, according to Turldsh law. Wlien the firman, or death-warrant, has arrived from Constantinople, it is still invalid without the solemn assent of each member of the family of the murdered man, declared before the Governor and Mejlis; and even after this, at the place of execution, all the members of the family are asked once more if they give their consent; and any one of them can still pardon the condemned by dissenting from the rest. The family who appeared on this occasion before the court stood in a Hue at the end of the room, like a row of masked and muffled figures on the ancient Greek stage. They consisted of the old mother of the murdered man, his widow, a daughter and son, both grown up, and two younger children. They were all in deep mourning; the women wore black veils overshadowing their foreheads, and looked like the avenging furies who pursued Orestes. Each was asked in turn what their wish was, and each in turn uttered the fatal word αἷμα, "blood." I never shall forget the savage expression with which this declaration was made.
The widow stepped forward into the middle of the court, and said, raising her fiendish arms, "I wish to lick his blood from the executioner's knife." A little boy, not fourteen years old, glared at me with eyes gleaming like those of a tiger's cub. We had entertained some hopes that the old mother would have relented; and a humane Turk, one of the members of the Mejlis, asked her whether she would not forgive, as she hoped God would forgive her; but it was all in vain. It is said that the widow carried a brace of pistols in her bosom, and threatened to shoot any of the family who showed symptoms of relenting. I saw there was no more to be done, so I turned to the Caimakam, and said, "If this man is executed to-day, and there afterwards comes a counter-order from Constantinople, I regard you as responsible for all the consequences; on your head be it." I had no very distinct idea what consequences there could be, but felt it necessary, in a case of life and death like this, to say something.
A mysterious threat always tells with the Turks more than a definite one, and the Caimakam trembled like Felix. I got up and left the Mejlis, and then arose an old grey-bearded Mussulman, the Capouji Bashi of Rhodes, whose position is, to a certain extent, independent of that of the Governor, and said, "Caimakam, I wash my hands of this matter; if you choose to disobey the firman, take the consequences yourself." So the poor Caimakam, finding himself deserted by the Mejlis, gave way, and decided on risking nothing for the chance of saving an innocent man. The Mejlis broke up. The family of avengers stood on the quay, the usual place of execution at Rhodes, waiting impatiently for the condemned man to appear. The Cavass Bashi, or chief of the police, calmed their impatience by telling them that an executioner could not be found. The fact was that the Turks were afraid of a rescue. There was a ship in the harbour full of Cassiotes, countrymen of the condemned, and the sympathies of the whole Greek population of Rhodes were roused. So the Turks, having quieted the friends of the condemned by saying that there was a reprieve for three days, and appeased the family by the excuse of not being able to find an executioner, proceeded to double the guards of the konak, and to get the guns of a ship of war in the harbour ready to fire on the quay, if necessary. Then at sunset, locking the town gates a little sooner than usual to prevent any great crowd, they called in the family, who rushed to the place of execution with savage joy, shut out the sympathizing- crowd, and finished what we call in England the last act of the law—I am afraid that in Turkey such executions are sometimes but legalized mm-ders. I had been out walking to enjoy the glorious sunset, congratulating myself with the faint hope that our exertions had obtained a few days' reprieve, when I met a great crowd coming from the town. In the centre was a woman with a flushed cheek and fierce eye, beating her naked bosom with alternate hand, and in regular time, the action reminding me at once of the planetus of the ancients. It was the sister of the unhappy man who had just been executed. Her eyes had no tears; she was thinking of a future vendetta, when her turn would come.
The next day the Greek ships in the harbour lowered their colours half-mast high. A long procession of all the principal Greeks in Rhodes attended the funeral of the unhappy man, who I really believe was sacrificed to some vile family feud; and after the funeral I had a visit from the chief mourner, Mr. Leonidas Sakelarides. The mention of his name obliges me to give a sketch of a long previous history, in which this execution is only one act. Some three years ago, an Austrian vessel was wrecked off the little island of Cassos. The Cassiotes are enterprising mariners, who combine the professions of trader and pirate in a way more profitable to themselves than pleasant to their neighbours. The captain of the Austrian vessel went on shore, little knowing that he had entered into a den of thieves. He drew up the usual protest, or declaration of the shipwreck, before the only local authority he could find in the island, a Greek council of primates.
The captain unluckily knew no Greek. The secretary of the Council being the only person in the place who knew Italian, pretended to take down the captain's protest in Greek, writing all the time a false declaration to the effect that all the cargo was lost at sea. This false protest the captain unknowingly signed. Then the Cassiotes, thinking themselves secure, plundered the vessel and appropriated all the cargo. But the ship having been insured at Malta, in due course the fraud was discovered by the under-writers, and satisfaction demanded from the Turkish Government. Mr. Leonidas, the chief mourner, is a young Cassiote who was educated at Athens, where lie acquired notions of a civilization unknown to his pirate countrymen. He denounced the persons who had plundered the ship, and through his means the facts were proved against them. In revenge they burnt his house and his young sister alive in it, and attempted his own life; so that now he lives at Rhodes, being afraid to go to Cassos.
Now the fray in Alexandria, in which one Greek was killed, and in consequence of which another was executed, arose out of the long-standing Cassiote feud between Leonidas and the pirates whom he denounced. If this feud had never been, the man would never have been killed, nor his supposed murderer executed. Leonidas, a near relation of the man executed, tried to save his life by making a sort of compromise with other accused parties in Cassos. Failing in this, he now takes his turn in exacting vengeance; and on the day after the execution, he appeared at the Mejlis, and denounced the widow who had shown such blood-thirstiness, as one of the persons who had burnt his house and sister. The answer which the widow gave to this charge in my presence was very characteristic. "I thought," she said, "that it was always lawful to burn the house of an enemy."
I foresee that Cassos from this day forth will be divided by a deadly feud, which will last perhaps even longer than the Turkish empire.
This little island now contains two parties, each solemnly pledged to destroy each other's life and property,—the party of Leonidas, who seems to have a courage worthy of Thermopylge, and the party of the pirates, who are quite prepared to burn him alive.