Congeries of little thoroughfares

We took a stroll through the body of the village, which consisted of a congeries of little thoroughfares — they could not be called streets — rudely paved, and not broader than the Haymarket footpath. At the doors of the houses, the girls were sitting, according to custom, all without bonnets, and mostly very pretty. There were, also, more coffee-houses; but these inland ones had no fireworks. We were obliged to buy lanterns here, to go about with, as at Constantinople; for the night was dark, and several of the lanes had open gutters running along the middle of them. When we had walked enough, we came back to the hotel and went to bed.

The house was so slightly built, that the least noise was heard all over it; and the boards bent and creaked when you trod on them, in a manner that was perfectly awful. .My bedroom was over the storehouse ; and the planks of the floor had so shrunk, that when any one came below with a candle, the reflection of their divisions ran all along the ceiling in bars of light. The only ornament of my chamber was a picture of a ship by a native artist. His ideas had been more extensive than his canvas ; for, wishing to portray an immense vessel, he had commenced her on so large a scale, that he found he had left no room for her topmasts; but not wishing to omit them he had bent them down at right angles, and so finished them horizontally. I suppose this picture may rank as the worst in the world.

Shaved in a coffee-house

We were up at seven next morning, and in the sea ten minutes afterwards. My two friends were shaved in a coffee-house. The master was also the barber. He lathered in the old-fashioned style, with his hand and a basin; and he kept his strop tied round his waist. His razor had an English blade, which was put in an awkward wooden handle. The floor of this cafe was of mud, and very uneven. Lots of customers were there already, sitting on the benches, like tailors, and smoking narghiles. Principe was evidently an early place. All the Greek girls were about in crowds, fresh as dewy flowers; the band of music was also beginning to play, and the coffee-houses generally were filling. All the dwellings were built in the same fragile manner as the hotels. You imagined a grand palace, with porches and columns; and then you came close to it, and found only boards painted in distemper, like scenery guided tours turkey.

After breakfast, we started, on donkeys, to make an excursion about the island. The animals were not so clever as their Cairo brethren, but went much better than the asses in England. No whip was respired: the proprietor, on starting, gave each of us a skewer, and with this we were expected, literally, to peg into the poor devil’s shoulders. The least touch, however, sufficed to start the animal into an amble. We skirted an iron mine — the entire island is composed of red ferruginous earth and stone — and then passed a long vineyard of curiously small grapes, after which wo came upon an open track of ground, very like Hampstead Heath. Two or three desolate-looking monasteries were perched about upon the hills, and we went up to one of these. The inmates were all Greek. The principal monk showed us the church — a small, damp building, very old, with some tawdry and tarnished saints about it, painted and gilt as usual. On the lectern was a testament, and the priest asked me to show him how the English read and pronounced Greek; and was surprised to hear that the study

of that language was part of our ordinary school education. I afterwards penciled down the commencement of the nativity chapter in the Diatessaron, and asked him if he could read it. This he did pretty well, but with a pronunciation entirely different to ours; indeed, had I not known the sentence by heart — it having formed part of an old “Doctor’s Day” examination — I could not have understood him.