of independence common to their class. The Samiotes who cross over to the opposite mainland make the best brigands, and are the dread of the Turks; the Samiotes who stop at home make the best citizens, and are the most law-abiding race to be found in the Greek islands. Samos, with the exception of the plain around the ancient Greek city, now barely inhabited, is all mountainous, and the mountains are fertile, many of them with forests up to the top; hence a typical Samiote is a shepherd from the mountain side, and a fine fellow he is. This forms the difference between Chiotes and Samiotes; the former live principally on the coast, and are a timid, shrewd, mercantile race, the latter brave and hardy, and in a contest with Turkey the latter qualities are the most valuable, as the result shows. Throughout Samos every village we visited-and we visited nearly all- -was prosperous; an element of security for life and property seemed to render enterprise hopeful, and contentment in the existing order of things prevailed.

We land at Karlovassi, and are at once cheered by the sight of a flagred and blue with a white cross thereon, the emblem of independence. On the shore of the little harbour soldiers in exceedingly gay uniform meet us; they wear the Greek costume, only their petticoats or fustanelli, instead of being white cotton are of blue cloth; their coat is blue, with long flapping sleeves, their waistcoats are richly embroidered with red, and so are their gaiters; they carry a sword by their side. These are the Samiote guards. On inquiry we were told that this costume was only adopted two years ago; originally it was the dress of the villagers in MarathoCombo, a colony in Samos from Epirus, and consequently Albanian.

Modern Samos in fact is a mass of little colonies, for the island was uninhabited for a century after the Turkish inroads, until a pasha in 1550 went to hunt there one day, and recognised its fertility, as the poet

Menander did centuries before, when he applied to it the Greek proverb that at Samos "even hens give milk." On representing this fertility to the Sultan, colonists from all parts of the empire were induced to go there by promises of gifts of land; consequently each Samiote village has a different type of countenance, though I am inclined to think from their dialect and physiognomy that the Ionian type prevails-probably Ionians from the neighbouring mainland. At the same time many villages claim relationship with the Peloponese, Macedonia, Lesbos, &c. Doubtless this mixture of blood has had a beneficial effect on the Samiote of to-day; only hardy and energetic men would undertake to colonise an island which had run to waste; at all events the offspring are finer Greeks than you meet elsewhere.

As in Chios mule riding is the only mode of progression; roads are being made, and an excellent one from the capital Vathy to the ancient capital Samos, or, as it is now called, Tigani, is actually finished, but the islanders have as yet a distrust in the merits of carts and carriages, and the road is grass-grown save for a mule track in the middle. The prince told me that the parliament had extensive schemes for road works all over the island, only money is wanting at present for the various enterprises. The Sultan in consideration of this fact has remitted 100,000 piastres of his tribute on condition that roads are made with the money. "He thinks," said a cynical inhabitant of the slopes of Mount Kerki, "that in case of a disturbance arising, when good roads are made, he will be better able to subdue us than he was before."

As we wait for our mules, the smart guards come to us, and ask where we are going and our object; when satisfied as to our innocent intent they encourage us by saying we may travel all over their island without fear,

realised, for nothing but the greatest civility attended our wanderings.

We stroll into the church; perhaps the most interesting thing for us who have just arrived at Samos is the throne of the prince therein, with

Tw (let him live) written over it, and then there is the invariable richly carved tempelon or rood screen which we see in every church in these islands. In fact carving is quite a specialty about here.

The mountain scenery of Samos is truly gorgeous, surpassing all things in the Greek islands in loveliness. Through peeps in the fir forests you get glimpses of olive groves, of distant sea and islands; through peeps in the olive groves you get glimpses of fir forests, craggy mountains, blue distances and bluer sea. Every shade is blue, and then sometimes these olive groves reach to the summit of lofty hills, giving to each peak certain peculiar tints of blue, resembling stamped Utrecht velvet in softness; tall gaunt cypresses stand out by way of contrast, and poplars without leaves, when we saw them-called evкà by the Greeks from the whiteness of their bark-and then the foreground beneath you is gay with various coloured anemones spread out like a carpet, amongst the bushes. We turn a corner, and look down on a village climbing the mountain-side, of a curious rich orange colour, which harmonises wonderfully with the scenery. On the flat roofs they place soil of a certain yellow marl, which, when soaked with rain, imparts its colour to the walls, and hence the curious effect.

This was the village of MarathoCombo on the southern slopes of Mount Kerki, where we arrived on the third day. It is the chief town of one of the four districts into which Samos is politically divided, and in point of size is second only to the capital, Vathy. Here we learnt more about the government and the internal working of the Samiote freedom.

They have a parliament, consisting of thirty-eight members in all, which

meets once a year, in the spring, either at Vathy, where they have a parliament-house, or at the Chora, the old Turkish capital, in the parish church. The sitting is never for less than thirty, or more than forty days. Every man in Samos has a vote. Out of this assemblage five senators are annually chosen to stay at Vathy, to act as the prince's permanent council-one from each of the divisions, and the fifth to act as chancellor of the exchequer; but without the consent of parliament not a penny can be spent.

All justice in its minor details is administered locally in the dikasteria of the four provinces by the two demarchs elected for the purposes. Cases of greater importance come before the Court of Areopagus, or assizes, which take place periodically, and are presided over by the senator for each province.

on

The dikasterion at Maratho-Combo was not a prepossessing building, and the government official (evayyedev's) was not a man of great personal intelligence; but he grew warm the subject of his country's freedom. On the table of the justice hall lay a copy of the code of laws in use in the modern Hellenic kingdom. The Samiotes express a great respect for their kinsmen on the European mainland, for whose freedom they fought. It is a fashion in the island to eat off plates on which the king or queen of the Hellenes, or heroes of the war of independence, are printed. during the Cretan revolution so many Samiotes went to join their fighting fellow Greeks that the Sultan sent a man-of-war to Vathy harbour. It was an awkward time for the prince; he feared that if his subjects assisted the Cretans too visibly, and the Cretans failed, an attempt might be made to place Samos once more under direct Turkish rule. So, amongst other orders of a like nature, he commanded all these plates to be broken. "But," said our host, off whose plates we were eating, "we only broke a few for show,

But

and put the rest into a cupboard until affairs were settled." Certainly there are plenty of royal plates in Samos now, and plenty of portraits of their Hellenic majesties on the walls, not to mention handkerchiefs by the dozen with stirring pictures thereon of Kotsari, Diakos, and other celebrities of the revolution.

To the development of Samos there is naturally more wanting than good government. The lack of money is felt here, as it is in Greece proper, as a serious drawback to progress. Samos is full of minerals, but there is no local capital to open mines. Drainage would make the plain, once so fertile near the old town, again habitable. Nevertheless great activity is evinced by the handful of merchants who live at Tigani, on the ruins of the once famous Samos. This year they have opened out the old aqueduct which Herodotus mentioned as one of the wonders of Samos (Herod. lib. iii. ch. lx.), with a view to supplying the town with water. This is an excessively interesting object for the archæologist, piercing, as it does, for two and a half miles the heart of the mountain behind the town, and showing thereby the engineering skill of the ancient Greek. It was lost till the spring of last year, when a priest named Cyril, from the monastery of the Holy Trinity, discovered its long-lost southern entrance whilst ploughing.

At the cost of 20,000 francs the Samiotes have now almost completed the restoration of the ancient channel, and the merchants of Tigani, excited in the possession of this boon, hope soon to restore the ancient prosperity of their town. They have dug up the ruins of an old temple, with which they are restoring the old mole-mentioned likewise by Herodotus as the second wonder of Samos, and they are clearing out their harbour; to do this they purpose putting a small tax on foreign merchant ships, which touch here for raisins, wine, and caryb-beans, but the consular agents live at Vathy, and are opposed

to having Tigani raised up as a rival harbour.

It is a pleasant walk across the once fertile plain to the third wonder of Samos-the ruined temple of Hera, of which but one tottering column is left standing. The plain is covered with remnants of the past, and the buried town and its environs would amply reward an archæologist for the trouble of digging. Moreover in Samos the country is safe. It is not as it is at Ephesus, where the excavator has to be guarded by cavasses; here he can dig at his leisure, and could doubtless easily come to terms with the Samiote government for the transport of his treasures troven, which for some time past has been an object of difficulty in Greece, and is now in Turkey.

How glorious must have been a panegyris at the Heroon of Samos, when the temple in all its richness, before the marauding days of Marc Antony and other Vandals, received countless Greek pilgrims from the neighbouring islands and coasts!

Greek religious history is apt to repeat itself, for up on the hill slopes above the Heroon an annual Christian pilgrimage still takes place; 3,000 go there from Asia Minor and the neighbouring islands with their blind, their paralysed, and their lame. Miracles are on record, but the sceptical say the same people are kept to be cured year by year. Undoubtedly the monks are very rich, and they have chosen the spot for their monastery of the Holy Cross with judgment; it is out of the reach of pirates, and near enough to the Herœon to carry on the idea of a religious centre.

A parallel case is before us in the panegyris to the shrine of the Madonna of Tenos, called by the Greeks the Queen of Queens. It is a sort of panhellenic festival, whither twice a year from 25,000 to 30,000 pilgrims will assemble. Now Tenos is an island only a few miles from Delos, and the miraculous picture of the

Virgin was conveniently discovered just after the war of independence, when the idea of panhellenism was rife; so to the Cyclades, close to the ancient centre of Delos, flock Greek devotees from every corner of the Greek world at this very time.

Samiote shepherds are quaint, simple men, the back-bone of their country. You meet one; he says, pa kaλn, "good hour to you." Practice alone teaches the appropriate replies, Hóλa Tà erη, "many years to you;" "well met." And never shall I forget the effect produced by a shepherd who related his adventures to us with a Nereid. There he sat in his skin cloak, his crook in his hand, his red fez jauntily placed on one side of his head, as he told us how one night a goat followed him all the way from Carlovassi to Pyrgos with a tinkling bell; at each village he came to the goat left him as he entered, to rejoin him on the other side. At length at a well near Pyrgos his mule stopped, and no power of his would urge him on. At the same time a bright light in the shape of a figure came out of the well; the goat ran off and was seen no more. Three days afterwards he was sick. "Surely," he added, with excitement, "there was no doubt about it; it was the Travayía (Virgin) herself who came as a Nereid to drive away some evil spirit that was following me."

The shepherd sits on the mountain side with his σarova, or bagpipe-a hideous enough instrument in a house, but excedingly quaint amongst the wild hills. It consists of an inflated pigskin, with a cow's-horn at one end with holes for the fingers and a hole to blow in. Then another pastoral instrument is the σupaúdiov, a veritable pan-pipe, an Ionian instrument made out of a simple reed, with six holes for the fingers down one side and one for the thumb on the other. A small shepherd-boy played this for us with wonderful precision and taste, rambling on from one tune to another.

As we approached the old capital after our sojourn in the mountains

traces of antiquity grew around us -a statue let in here and there, an inscription on a church tower, and so forth. At the village of Maurodei they still make a sort of ugly, quaintly coloured pottery, and ingenious cups which, if you fill them above a certain point, become entirely empty. This is all that is left of the once celebrated

Samiote industry. We saw many specimens of plates let into houses and churches by way of mural decoration, and in some villages a few were still existing amongst the household crockery. When we reached the Chora, however, the old Turkish capital, we were at once steeped in antiquity: every house boasts of a treasure let into the walls-some statue, some carving, or some column which has come from the ancient town two miles distant; but the glory has departed from this southern side of the island, and is now centred in Vathy. The Chora still possesses a palace for the prince, and it may be gay when the parliament meets in its church.

Vathy, which takes its name from its deep (Balès) harbour, must be the seat of government until better days dawn on Tigani, and they can restore the old harbour of Samos to its ancient value. Vathy is built in a basin surrounded by lofty hills; it reminds one of a Riviera town, There is the higher Vathy struggling up the hill-side, house above house; and there is the lower Vathy on the shore with a well-appointed quay, and the prince's square, substantial-looking palace in the middle. The lower Vathy has all been built since Turkish days, and a very flourishing little place it is, attesting more than anything else can do to the soundness of the new government

Forty years have elapsed since Samos was definitely free, and this space of time has wrought a wonderful difference in the island. There are now schools in every village and paid masters, whereas thirty years ago there were only schools in the principal villages, and the masters in many

cases scarce able to live.1 These schools are very tidy specimens indeed— well built, all of them, and adorned internally with maps, and mottoes all round the walls, such as "Success to the Principality, and freedom of Samos."

Every child is brought up by its parents and masters to revere the very word of freedom, and the prince has no power to infringe their hardwon liberties; for Greek though he is, he has lived at Constantinople all his life, and is a nominee of the Sultan, and might be tempted, as Greek hospodars of the Porte used to be, to gain credit to himself by infringing the liberties of those under them. The first princes of Samos tried to do this, but one day the Samiotes drove Prince Vogrides, his agents and his caïmacan, out of the island; and in 1850 the Sultan by a firman granted the complete liberty of self-government which is now enjoyed.

The prince lives at Vathy, and receives 12,500 piastres per annum ; he has a steam yacht provided for him, and he has a very grand guard to 1 M. Guérin's account of Samos, 1854.

attend upon him, the facings of whose uniform are of gold, where that of the others is only red; he has a good house, and a large garden, divided from it by a street. He walks about the town with an easier step than most princes would do, for in point of fact he is only the Sultan's agent there, to see that the 300,000 piastres is paid regularly, and to see that the Samiotes don't quarrel amongst themselves, in which way his presence is beneficial, for they know that the least misconduct on their part would be at once reported, and made the most of at Constantinople.

As we steamed out of Vathy harbour I could not help wondering how long this rope of piastres would bind Samos to Turkey, and thinking that the coins would be better spent in converting mule tracks into roads than in swelling the coffers of the sick man. We touched at Chios again on our way to Smyrna, and the contrast was still more forcibly brought before us-we had left prosperity and peace, we saw around us ruin and desolation.

J. THEODORE BENT.

"AT the beginning of the twentieth century," wrote M. Gabriel Charmes in a recent number of the Revue des deux Mondes, "Russia will count a hundred and twenty millions of inhabitants occupying boundless tracts in Europe and in Asia; about sixty millions of Germans supported by thirty millions of Austrians will rule the centre of Europe; a hundred and twenty millions of Anglo-Saxons, established in the finest portions of the globe, will spread over them their language, their manners, their civilisation. Is it possible that France only should renounce her glorious destinies? Is it possible that she should leave to Italy, overflowing with No. 286.-VOL. XLVIII.

youthful ambitions, or to Spain, in whom her old colonial genius seems to be reawakening, the task of representing the Latin races in the great struggle for the conquest of the world? Is it possible that, shut up within her narrowed frontiers, and satisfied with her mediocre fortune, she should put away from her all thought of expansion, all wish for influence beyond her own borders?"

It might be possible and desirable. indeed, M. Charmes goes on to say, that France should take up this rôle of effacement abroad if the statement so often made were true that the French have no colonising aptitudes. But he maintains indignantly that it

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