A CRUISE IN GREEK WATERS.*
ALTHOUGH the subject of Captain Townshend's present work is much more hackneyed than the one treated in his Ten Thousand Miles of Travel, Sport, and Adventure, which we reviewed about a year ago, this book leaves on our minds the more favourable impression. Our recollections of the former work are not, indeed, sufficiently vivid to allow of an actual comparison, and it is pos- sible that if Captain Townshend publishes a third book this time next year, the present work will also have faded from our memory. There is nothing very distinctive in the account of a yacht cruise to Athens and Constantinople by way of Lisbon and Gibraltar. Captain Townshend saw things which do not belong to his own nation or to every-day life, but many others had seen them before. What is really new in his pages might be compressed into an extremely small space, and would hardly fill a magazine-paper. The description of sport near Tunis is especially recommended to us as introducing Englishmen to a new hunting-ground, but Captain Townshend tells us little in these chapters that could not be contained in a single letter to the Field. With all this, Captain Townshend's book is pleasantly written, and is a faithful record of his travels. Sometimes he sketches scenes which are tolerably well known to us, with a happy touch and in harmonious colours. The book is only meant to be skimmed, but it will reward skimming.
Captain Townshend has not been fortunate in his title. Attention may have been called to Greece by the massacre of our countrymen, but even such an incident cannot give the charm of
• A Cruise in Chwek Waters, with a Hunting Excursion in Tunis. By F. Trench Townshend, RA., Captain, 2nd Life Guards. London : Hurst and Biackett. 1470.
novelty to so trite a subject. Even if Captain Townshend's Cruise did not recall to our minds Lord Carlisle's Diary in Turkish and Greek Waters, the number of existing tours upon that coast would be enough to warn off a new comer. In the present case, too, the main interest of the book does not centre in Greece. Captain Townshend has much more to tell us about Spain and Portugal, Algeria and Constantinople, than about any of the Greek islands or cities. We confess to having skipped ruthlessly when we came to a description of the Acropolis and to legends of the old divinities, which are all to be found in Smith's classical dictionaries. We paused for a moment to note that there is a rail- way from the Pirmus to Athens, with trains that run every half- hour, and a station near the Temple of Theseus. Captain Town- shend considers this almost a sacrilege, and asks what the old hero- king of Attica would think if the whistle of the locomotive startled him from his long slumber. To those whose recollections of Athens date from King Otho's time, and who associate that city with the blockade occasioned by the claims of Don Pacifico, the railway is marvellous enough, without an appeal being made to Theseus. With regard to Greek brigandage, Captain Townshend tells us that his party had a narrow escape. While they were on their way from Corinth to Argos, their dragoman suddenly pointed to a spot fifty yards ahead, and declared that he saw the gleam of a gun-barrel. The Englishmen at once drew their revolvers, and rode on, keeping well together, with their glances fixed on the suspected place and their fingers on the triggers. As they approached, two armed men stepped into the path, and asked who they were, and in what direction they were going. A short answer satisfied them, and the English party went on without being molested ; but Captain Towshend ascribes this escape to "the sight of our arms, and the fact of our having only one baggage-mule, as from their appearance in the wild lonely spot where we met them, and their suspicious questions, there could be little doubt but that our two friends belonged to some of the bands of brigands who make travelling in Greece such a dangerous amusement. Our dragoman even asserted that he knew the band to which the men belonged, and had heard at Corinth that they were in the neighbourhood."
We now turn from Greece to Captain Townshend's experiences on the way out, and we first stop at Lisbon to observe the differ- ence between a Spanish and a Portuguese bull-fight. In Portugal, we are told, the bull's horns are tipped with wood, so that it cannot inflict deadly injuries on its opponents. The only dangerous part of the spectacle seems to be one entrusted to negroes, who lie flat on the sand in a row and push themselves along towards the bull. They are armed with a spiked pole, and when the charging bull lowers its head to toss one of the prostrate figures, a dart is inserted in the back of its neck which makes it throw its head up, and then instead of tossing the negroes it merely tramples on their bodies. They then sit down in chairs forming a semicircle, and are knocked over in turn by the bull's charges. After this, one of them stands in front of the bull awaiting its charge, and then flings himself between its horns, grasping it at the same time round the neck, while the other negroes hang on its tail. " One negro," says Captain Townshend, "missed his mark when endeavouring to throw himself between the horns, and being caught on one of the wooden knobs on the point of the horns was hurled a considerable distance. A general rush of chubs waving their mantles dis- tracted the bull's attention from the insensible body of the negro, who soon after was helped on to his feet, and managed to limp out of the arena, the blood dropping from his mouth." From Lisbon Captain Townshend takes us to Gibraltar, and there acquaints us with a fact which throws some doubt on the traditional strength of that fortress. We hear that picked riflemen were placed on the level plain below the Rock on the neutral ground, from whence they fired into the embrasures with such effect that the whole rock inside the gallery was starred with the marks of the bullets. Gibraltar being a free port, and tobacco being one of the Government mono- polies in Spain, there is naturally a good deal of smuggling at all times ; but it is worthy of remark that whenever there is a pronunciamento in Spain, every shop in Gibraltar is immediately cleared out of its stock of contraband articles, and they are all hurried across the frontier. Captain Townshend made an ex- cursion to Granada while the yacht belonging to his party was at Malaga, and the account he gives of diligence-travelling in Spain is peculiarly vivid:—
" On one of the leading mules was mounted a ragged postilion, with a pair of sharp spurs on his heels, and a short whip in his hand. A runner armed with a huge stick, which he applied indiscriminately to the heads and ribs of the next four unfortunate animals, dodged about Irons one side of the road to the other, getting only an occasional lift beside the driver. The driver on his part lashed the wheelers with a cruel-looking ox-hide whip, while the conductor or mayoral, with a lap full of stones, pelted every mule in turn, and yelled at them at the top of his voice. Under these united powers of persuasion, the pace. never flagged, nor did the loose pieces of rock which were scattered about, or the streams which had to be crossed with a drop of three or four feet into the river-bed, ever cheek the furious pace."
Crossing to Africa, we have one or two glimpses of sport, the' most exciting kind being the boar-hunt. Although the rifle is used instead of the spear, there is danger enough to the hunter,. for he shoots from the saddle as he passes the boar at full gallop,. the muzzle almost touching its body. A turn of the boar's head, is sometimes enough to rip up the horse, and the keen contention. prevailing among the hunters for the honour of putting the first bullet into the boar adds greatly to the spirit of the chase. One spectacle which much impressed Captain Townshend while he was in Tunis was that of an Arab girl, aged eleven, who. was already the mother of three children. It is a feature of domestic life in the same country, and one which seems to remind: Captain Townshend of his schoolboy days, that the bastinado is.
the general punishment, "fathers of families preferring to apply the rod to the soles of their children's feet rather than to those parts which are generally selected by the British parent awl schoolmaster." Such a profanation would be enough to make all former public schoolmasters turn in their graves. We cannot. imagine an Etonian stooping down to unlace his boots when Keate or Haw trey motioned him with a magnificent gesture to the- block.
Constantinople has been very often described already, but there- is something picturesque in Captain Townshend's view of it :—
" Decidedly the best and most luxurious manner of seeing Constanti- nople is to live on board a yacht in the Bosphorus. Anchored in the. Golden Horn, away from the filth and unsavoury odours of Pere, the- clean deck of an English yacht affords the best possible point whence to- observe, not only the unrivalled beauty of situation of the city of the Sultan, but also the varieties of life and costume, which can nowhere else be seen to such perfection. The chief traffic of the city is carried on in the narrow waters which divide Europe from Asia, and wash the base of the hills on which stand the various gum tera of Stamboul, Galata,. Pets, Tophana, and Scutari on the Asiatic shore. From sunrise to sunset the scene was over lively, ever varying. Calques of every description were constantly passing, from the crazy old fruit-boats laden with melons, to the gorgeous twelve-oared barge of some rich pasha. Here a calque, decorated with crimson and gold, flies through the water, impelled by the strong arms of a dozen boatmen, clothed in splendidly embroidered jackets and long, loose white sleeves. In the bottom of the- boat are seated, near the stern, half-a-dozen veiled women, in the. brightest silk dresses, their dark eyes and fine features just traceable. through the thin yashmacks, turned curiously towards the smart little. yacht, from the stern of which the English flag almost droops into the water. On the raised place in the stern of the calque sits, cress-leggod, a black-coated, red-capped pasha, the lord and master of the gaily dressed ladies, gravely smoking a chibouque, or telling his beads, barely raising his eyes to the yacht as he passes. Sometimes, in the absence. of their lord, a hideous black eunuch squats in the stern, the protector and the guardian of the morals of the fair Cireassians who compose his. master's harem. On the other side of the yacht, a calque of enormous. dimensions is slowly impelled by six or eight nearly naked negroes, down whose black faces the perspiration streams as they labour at the heavy oars, extreme poverty visible in their tattered garments and. emaciated bodies. A number of peasants are crammed into the boat, of various nationalities and colours, Greek, Turk, and Negro, returning to. the villages on the Bosphorus from the markets of Stamboul and Pera."
Another picture of much the same merit is that of the Sultan going. to mosque in his State calque. We regret that Captain Town-• shend was just too late for the opening of the Suez Canal, which would have furnished him with better materials than those he has.. had at his command, and would probably have shown his descrip- tive powers to some advantage.
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