which are yet called Samos, Ithaca, and Leucadia is sometimes given as the name of Santa-Maura. Before reaching this last island as you sail onward, you come to the bay of Arta, on whose western coast lie the ruins of Nicopolis,

Where the second Cæsar's trophies rose,

Now, like the hand that reared them, withering;

so that the Albanian shore (which, if it do boast of any beauty, it is certainly of a rugged character) is still replete with scenes of classic interest -in fact, to enumerate and to dilate upon them, would take volumes Macedonia, the birthplace of Alexander, Epirus, Illyria, Tempe's Vale, and hosts of others. But for the peaceful loveliness of nature, the rich evergreen foliage of the olive groves, the balmy incense of the myrtle plantations in blossom, the walks of orange groves, the rocks on whose: recesses the wild violets, fragrant and abundant, fill the still ether with their perfume, the vineyards teeming with their delicious fruit in profusion, the fields of gran turco, with their promise of plenteousness-with all these the sight and the senses are more delighted at Corfu than in any other of the seven islands. Indeed, I doubt if it be not more charming than any residence amongst the islands of the Mediterranean. It also is a very convenient distance from Italy and Greece. It is only a short sail from Trieste and Athens, and Patras can be readily reached from it. The transit from either of these places to Constantinople, Syria, or to Egypt, is very easy; and the steam voyage to any of them from Corfu is really so short, that, in these days of locomotion, such a trip is of everyday occurrence. So the advantages of a winter residence in Corfu are very many, and the number of visitors to its capital are numerous. A sketch describing the customs, dress, manners, religion, and habits of the Corfiotes, together with their feast-days and amusements, has been given in Bentley's Miscellany for November, 1859, and February, 1860; but there have been, since the time adverted to in those sketches, several disturbances in the Ionian Islands, which drew the attention of England: to the sites where such scenes had taken place. I know not, however, if they have been as yet recorded in such a way as to make the public ac quainted with the detail of them.

Corfu, which derives its name from a high mountain headland, Kopuη, which stands over the citadel of its town, and which is a most. prominent object to those sailing up the Adriatic, has been usually free from the disturbances which its larger sister-island, Cephalonia, has been so often subject to. Whether this arises from the greater civilisation of the town, which is full of Italian shops, and traders from other countries, the presence of the English lord high commissioner, with the heads of the military departments and two full regiments, the superior fortifica+tions in possession of the British, or the more peaceable character of the natives, I cannot say, but during the whole of the disturbances in 1849 it was just as quiet as any town in England would have been. The English there resident enjoyed themselves very much during the winter with the resources which the opera and the numerous parties at the lord high commissioner's palace, and at other houses, continually going on, gave them, and, during the summer, with yachting and pic-nic excursions. Of the produce which its soil is prolific in, numerous details

are given in many treatises. The salt-pits are a great source of wealth to the persons who own the property adjacent to the bay where the pits are laid. The olives are productive always to a certain extent, but it is only about once in ten years that a very abundant season occurs. The maccaroni works are well worthy of a visit. The wine-making and the vintage have been treated elsewhere. The island is certainly more generally a resort of Europeans of other parts of the continent, and less a Greek colony, than any of the others. The native Romaic is only spoken by very few of the gentry exclusively, and by some of the lowest order of the agricultural classes; but in the town every one understands Italian, and not a few of the gentry speak French and English fluently. The Greek nobility in Corfu have apparently lost sight of the illiberal habit of secluding the unmarried females of their families in the way usually practised by Greeks in other places.

CEPHALONIA IN 1849.

To resume the sketch of the occurrences which took place in Cephalonia. At the close of the year 1848, that direful year for monarchies, and fatal one to Louis Philippe's power, which was one of the epochs in history marked by a convulsion which spread over the whole of Central and Southern Europe, the vigilant and efficient measures resorted to by Lord Seaton seemed to have had the effect of restoring tranquillity to the island. But, shortly after New Year's Day, a very remarkable time of year in the Ionian Islands, as all the Greek inhabitants invariably on the coming of the new year visit one another and offer mutual congratulations, the Black Mountain became the scene of a fearful tragedy. There was a half-pay officer, named Parker, who had been married to a Greek lady of Cephalonia, and who held a small appointment under our government which gave him the charge of travelling about the most unfrequented parts of Cephalonia; and he was called the forester of the island. Through that wild, bleak, inhospitable region he used, summer and winter, to be perpetually roving on foot. His habits of constant exercise and athletic frame had given him a wonderful power of endurance, and he was one of the best pedestrians I ever met with. In the month of January, 1849, he had taken up his residence in the cottage near the Black Mountain, and lived there with his wife, intending to remain stationed at it for a short period. Very soon after the New Year's Day ceremonials, the officers of the station had resolved upon having a party in the mess-room, and upon inviting all the Greek gentry in the island who were known in society to it. The invitations had actually been issued, and all parties were anxiously looking forward to the evening in question, when the feelings of the English inhabitants were shocked, and the state of the community quite disturbed, by a dreadful piece of intelligence which reached Argostoli about a week before the day named for the party. It appeared that Parker had gone out for a walk in the pine forest shortly after his having dined with his wife, and continued his stroll till he got into one of the most unfrequented paths of the wood. This was what his wife stated, and to her alone the English residents could trust for any information relative to him. That she had heard shots fired, and ran out in the direction

whence they came. There were no servants in the house. That she ran wildly through the forest, and at last came to the spot where she thought the shots issued from. That there she saw her husband's body lying; one bullet had gone through his leg, two through his chest, and one through his head. The body was still warm, but he had ceased to breathe. She ran down in a frantic state to the road which led to Argostoli, and never ceased till she had reached the town, and told the authorities of the dreadful murder. This took place late in the evening, and the next day a party went up, by order of the commandant, to bring the body of the unfortunate gentleman into Argostoli, and to have an inquest upon it. The verdict which they gave, of course, was that wilful murder had been committed by some parties unknown. But no Greek or inhabitant, no servant or resident, had been found to give any information relative to the cause or to the fact of having seen any armed persons or any disaffected characters either on the Black Mountain or elsewhere in the vicinity of the cottage. His wife was the only informant. This state of doubt, and the very uncertain character of the inhabitants of the island, showed the necessity of being on the watch strictly, and the general grief which was entertained by all the English gentry on finding that this respected individual had met with such an appalling death, made them, one and all, resolve to postpone the preparations for the party. He was buried with military honours. After this, a very great gloom pervaded the society of the island. The military were constantly on the qui vive. The alarms were frequent. The calls to attend at night in different localities of Argostoli under arms, and wait for several hours, until daylight, were of common occurrence. I recollect particularly two occasions, one in which we remained in a chapel to the north side of the town, and posted sentries all round the approaches. We were alarmed by a shot. One of the sentries, who was posted in a narrow lane, had his hand lacerated by a bullet which had been discharged at him, but by whom, it was impossible to discover. On another occasion, two shots had been fired at a sentry near the house where several of the military were stationed, but, being rather high in their range, had gone far over their mark, and had perforated the sails of one of the men-of-war which was lying in the harbour of Argostoli; so there was no doubt of a very hostile animus existing in the island to the British. The freedom of the press, which had been granted some little time before, had been the means of letting loose upon the world a flood of the wildest and most republican notions, which were published by the Greek residents in the island, bearing upon the necessity of the annexation of the island government to Greece, the throwing off the yoke of the British, and the free red republican sentiments which had found birth in Paris and been disseminated through Southern Europe at that time. The natives of the country used to be seen at work in the fields together, shouting out their songs, and evidently engaged in a train of thought, which their language, being strange to the English, could not assist the latter in seeing the drift of; but one song which I recollect particularly, commencing Znro EXλas, &c., was a great favourite with the Greeks, and it was descriptive of Greece being the finest and first of countries, to which all others were at one time subject. The energetic and demonstrative manners of the population which inhabit Southern Europe have been often remarked, and in no May-VOL. CXXVIII. NO. DIX.

H

countries do the manners of the natives exhibit more of the animation which is inseparable from the French, and which is made the ridicule of the English, than in the Ionian Islands. But no violence of any kind was shown to any individual soldier or officer in the neighbourhood of Argostoli in the daytime. Often have I walked alone in the long lonely walk which leads from the back or inner part of the town of Argostoli to Metaxata, and so round through the mountain district to the town again.

This walk is a distance of thirteen miles, and when I first arrived in the island it had a charm for me, as I was anxious to see the house where the great poet Lord Byron used to reside. The road at first lay through an olive grove, which lies between the foot of the hill on which the town is situate and the country. After leaving the grove, I passed the high ground on my right for some way, and afterwards proceeded through a level country to Metaxata, a distance of about six miles from the olive grove. The only objects which attracted attention on the route were the detached farm-houses of the Greek landholders, where the principal occupation seemed to be, amongst the labourers, that of laying out the fruit -bunches of small grape, called in the country passolini. Those they had left on the frames, to dry in the sun, had become shrivelled up to the small size of the currants which we use in England in our puddings. After they have been collected in large quantities they are put into huge hogsheads, and the men stamp them down with their naked feet. From this island there are more of these currants sent than from any in the Ionian group, although the name given them in England by the grocers is Zante currants. When I arrived at the village of Metaxata, my first object was to inquire from an aged Greek which house it was that Lord Byron had lived in. He took me himself to a long, lumbering, storehouse-looking building, the dwelling apartments of which were ascended by an outer flight of stairs, which had its entrance in a court-yard of small dimensions. This court-yard stood in the back part of the building, and it appears it was the place where the poet used to practise pistolshooting. The old Italian carekeeper, who lived in the house, asked me to enter, and I went in with him. The upper part of the house had only four habitable rooms, and they were of low pitch, and very small. They would have been, apparently, more appropriate for a shopkeeper's residence than that of an English nobleman. The lower part of the house was also divided into ground-floor chambers; one was a large stable, and the other a kitchen. The carekeeper seemed intelligent, and told me what he knew of Lord Byron, whom he had often seen. He was a man of about sixty years of age. He showed me the marks of the bullets where his noble host used to fire pistols against the wall. I heard from many, both in Cephalonia and elsewhere, that Lord Byron when there used to ride out in company with the officers of the garrison frequently, and that he did not to them ever show himself the exclusive and unsocial being that he was believed to be by English travellers.

The village of Metaxata is near, and does not contain more than about fifty houses. The houses have an air of poverty, but are sufficiently well built. From this place there is a good road, which leads round to the harbour of Argostoli. A little before I got into the town I saw a curiouslooking building-a Chinese pagoda-which had been erected by a Count Balsamachi, by way of an ornament to his grounds. This count is married

to the widow of the great Bishop Heber, so well known for his Indian travels, and the great goodness which his truly Christian spirit evinced. The town of Argostoli is certainly the largest town in the island, thought Cephalonia was formerly the capital. The streets are broad and well laid out, and bear high-sounding names, such as Ulyssus-street, the street of Themistocles, the road of Parnassus, the highway of Dionysius, labelled in Greek characters on their corner houses. The bottom stories of the houses are, where they belong to shopkeepers, arched, and the arches enclose stores of currants in hogsheads, wine in barrels, haberdashery laid on shelves, dried fish and olives, and that dainty so peculiar to the islands, the caviare, or fish ovarium, which is prized as a delicacy by the Greeks. The stores seem all to contain oil, groceries, sweetmeats made in conserves, chocolate, and, as it were, an omnium gatherum of all that is at all saleable, either for eating or for putting on. The Tribunale a fine building in the centre of the town-was the most remarkable object in it. The shopkeepers-most of them-spoke the VenetianItalian common to the islands. Whatever the morals or the principles of the Greeks might be, their manners were decidedly most prepossessing. Their love of music was very remarkable. Their songs, whether love ditties, or of a mournful character, sounded like the Italian romanzas. I recollect an instance of the partiality which the female portion of the com→ munity used to evince for singing. It was on the occasion of an officer who had gone in search of arms to one of the villages in the interior. He entered with a Greek guide and some soldiers into the house inhabited by one of the chief Greek landholders, who was supposed to be a ringleader in the commotions which had lately taken place in the island. The officer was a great performer on the guitar, to which he used to sing. After he had entered the house he commissioned the interpreter to go out in search of the arms with the soldiers. There were no men inside. He took up an instrument a guitar-which was lying on the table, and played and sung for the ladies. One of the young ladies, on his finishing his song, embraced him. As her mother was present, and also a sister, it could have been only an ebullition of the pleasure which she felt in hearing the music that caused her to do this. But the impulsive burst of joy with which the inhabitants of the islands welcome any music that pleases them, is quite surprising to the tame and unimpassioned English.

There is another favourite walk in the vicinity of Argostoli which takes you along the quay-a broad, spacious, and lengthened route, which extends from the bridge that crosses the marsh to a plateau in front of the gaol. On this plateau the military parade, and drills take place, and the barracks are situated at its farther end. From the barracks there is a road leading to the sea. At the extreme point of this road there is a natural curiosity, which all the visitors of Cephalonia and its inhabitants view with wonder. It is a large stream, which flows with great force from the sea through a narrow creek, and descends by four channels into the earth, and after this all trace of the water is lost. A short distance from where the stream issues a mill has been constructed, which brings in much profit to the owner. After this the road takes a circuit, and you pass by a line of country where the aloes grow in great profusion by the side of the road, which takes you into the back part of the town of Argostoli.