To the Gold Coast for Gold | Page 4

1872. The malaria-swamps to the north and south of the town have been drained and are being warped up: the 'never-failing succession of aguish fevers' will presently fade out of the guide-books. A macadamised boulevard has been built, and a breakwater is building. The once desert square, 'Georgios A',' has been planted with trees, which should be Eucalyptus; and adorned with two French statues of bronze which harmonise admirably with the surroundings. The thoroughfares are still Sloughs of Despond after rain, and gridirons of St. Laurence in dusty summer; but there are incipient symptoms of trottoirs. And throughout there is a disappearance of the hovels which resembled Port Sa'id in her younger day, and a notable substitution of tall solid houses.
All this has been brought about by 'fruit,' which in Patras means currants; that is, 'Corinthian grapes.' The export this year is unusual, 110,000 tons, including the Morea and the Islands; and of this total only 20,000 go to France for wine-making. It gives a surprising idea of the Christmas plum-pudding manufacture. Patras also imports for all the small adjacent places, inhabited by 'shaggy capotes.' And she will have a fine time when that talented and energetic soldier, General T��rr, whom we last met at Venice, begins the 'piercing of the Isthmus.' �� propos of which, one might suggest to Patras, with due respect, that (politically speaking) 'honesty is the best policy.'
Being at Patras on St. Andrew's Day, with a Scotch demoiselle on board, we could hardly but pilgrimage to the place of the Apostle's martyrdom. Mrs. Wood kindly sent her daughters to do the honours. Aghyos Andreas lies at the extreme south of the town on the system of ruts, called a road, which conducts down-coast. The church is a long yellow barn, fronting a cypress-grown cemetery, whose contents are being transferred to the new extramural. A little finger of the holy man reposes under a dwarf canopy in the south-eastern angle: his left arm is preserved at Mount Athos in a silver reliquary, set with gems. Outside, near the south-western corner, is the old well of Demeter (Ceres), which has not lost its curative virtues by being baptised. You descend a dwarf flight of brick steps to a mean shrine and portrait of the saint, and remark the solid bases and the rude rubble arch of the pagan temple. A fig-tree, under which the martyrdom took place, grew in the adjacent court; it has long been cut down, probably for fuel.
The population of Patras still affords a fine study of the 'dirty picturesque,' with clothes mostly home-made; sheepskin cloaks; fustanellas or kilts, which contain a whole piece of calico; red leggings, and the rudest of sandals; Turkish caps, and an occasional pistol-belt. The Palikar still struts about in all his old bravery; and the bourgeois humbly imitates the dingy garb of Southern Italy. The people have no taste for music, no regard for art, no respect for antiquities, except for just as much as these will bring. They own two, and only two, objects in life: firstly, to make money, and secondly, to keep and not to spend it. But this dark picture has a bright side. No race that I know is so greedy of education; the small boys, instead of wending unwillingly to school, crowd the doors before they are opened. Where this exceptional feeling is universal we may hope for much.
The last evening at Patras showed us a beautiful view of what is here called Parnassus (Parnass��), the tall bluff mountain up the Gulf, whose snows at sunset glowed like a balass ruby. We left the Morea at 2 A.M. (December 2), and covered the fifty-two miles to Zante before breakfast. There is, and ever has been, something peculiarly sympathetic to me in the 'flower of the Levant.' 'Eh! 'tis a bonny, bonny place,' repeatedly ejaculated our demoiselle. The city lies at the foot of the grey cliffs, whose northern prolongation extends to the Akroteri, or Lighthouse Point. A fine quay, the Strada Marina, has been opened during the last six years along the northern sea-front, where the arcades suggest those of Chester. It is being prolonged southwards to the old quarantine-ground and the modern prison, which rests upon the skirts of the remarkable Skopo, the Prospect Mountain, 1,489 feet high. This feature, which first shows itself to mariners approaching Zakynthos from north or from south, has a saddle-back sky-line, with a knob of limestone shaped like a Turkish pommel and sheltering its monastery, Panaghia of Skopo, alias Our Lady of the Look-out. Below it appears another and a similar outcrop near a white patch which has suggested marble-quarrying; and the northern flank is dotted with farmhouses and villas. The dwarf breakwater, so easily prolonged over the shallows, has not been improved; but at its