Chapter XII

Austrian Packet--Living on-board--Ionian Isles--Corfu.--Situation of
Corfu--A day late--Complaints--Commerce--Monopoly--Improvements--Lord
Nugent--Garrison Library--Newspapers--A character--A
mission--Voyage--Atmospheric delusion--Ragusa--Contrary winds--Water
spout.

♦ AUSTRIAN PACKET ♦

The steam-boat having failed to make her appearance, I engaged my passage to Corfu on-board the Austrian packet _Vigilante_ (Captain Melchiori), a very handsome frigate, pierced for ten guns, extremely well fitted out in every respect. I went on-board at night on the 22d, and the wind being right against us, we were unable to get under weigh until about three o’clock the following morning, when we began to tack out of the gulf. The operation was a very slow one, as there was then scarcely any wind around us. We lingered the whole day within sight of Patras, and approached so near to Missolonghi that we could see the people walking on its beach. The day was splendid. In the evening a veil of gossamer mist was suspended before the face of the hills on the southern shore; and the edge of the cloud being denser than the rest, had all the appearance of a ribbon to tie it round the brow for which it was destined. I was the only passenger on-board. The captain had been in the naval service of the emperor for forty years; and he was assisted in his duties by a first and second lieutenant, both active and intelligent men, who relieved each other on deck every four hours throughout the whole of the voyage. The attention of these gentlemen to their duties, and the perfect order that reigned on-board, might bear a comparison with any similar establishment in which even our own naval officers occasionally find employment.

Our mode of living was this,--and as it was seldom deviated from, except that the dishes were occasionally varied, the description of one day will do for all. At half-past eight o’clock in the morning, coffee was served in small cups, with a piece of biscuit, or a crust of bread. The coffee we took wherever we happened to be at that time, on deck, or in bed, or making our toilet. At nine the table was prepared for breakfast in the officer’s cabin, where also our berths (very comfortable berths too) were arranged, with half-latticed doors that shut them in. Breakfast usually consisted of biscuits, fried eggs (there being plenty of poultry on-board), broiled liver, slices of _uncooked_ ham, cheese, walnuts, and raisins, and red Santa Maura wine. We dined at three o’clock, usually beginning with rice or maccaroni, or vermicelli soup, zested by Parmesan cheese. Then came bouilli with beet-root, roast beef, roast or stewed fowl, with celery tops or some other green vegetable by way of salad; then cheese, walnuts and raisins and apples; sometimes a glass of liqueur, and coffee. Our wine was usually that of Santa Maura, and by no means objectionable.

♦ LIVING ON-BOARD ♦

The biscuits were the best I ever tasted. When our stock of bread was consumed, we had recourse to them: it was only necessary to dip them for a moment in a glass of water, and they become as soft as bread. In short, the living on-board the _Vigilante_ was such that I should have had no difficulty in “roughing it” with such fare for a voyage of any length whatever. My bed was very good in a plain way. If I wished to be alone, I retired to it and shut my door, and read or wrote by the light of the reflector at top, or slept, just as the fancy of the hour suggested. At night, there was a warm glass of good rum punch for any body who liked it, and the pipe and cigar, being confined to the deck, I suffered no inconvenience in that respect. There was a fiddler among the sailors, and also a guitarist, who, when all was going on smooth, cheered their companions with Maltese or Illyrian airs.

♦ IONIAN ISLES ♦

On the second morning of our voyage (24th November) when I went on deck, I had the gratification to find that we made way during the night, and were already close by the northern shore of Ithaca, which was on our left, as well as Cape Nisardo in Cephalonia, and on our right the island of Santa Maura. The morning was cloudy, with a light south wind, which yielding soon after to a strong land-breeze from the east, that bent our vessel almost on its side, we went on at the rate of nine or ten knots an hour. Soon after, we came in sight of the small islands of Paxo and Antipaxo, and passed by Parga, on the Albanian shore, which looked magnificent at a distance. The wind having again changed to the south, it was directly in our stern, and we proceeded with all our sails distended right before the breeze. Cape Bianco, off Corfu, was seen before sunset, at and half-past ten o’clock the same night we were anchored before the town, having performed, notwithstanding our delay in tacking out of the gulf, the speediest passage from Patras to Corfu which the _Vigilante_ had ever known.

♦ CORFU ♦

The next morning (25th) I went ashore, and proceeded to the Bella Venetia; but it was full of people waiting to go to Zante by the _Island_ steamer. I next tried Serjeant Taylor’s, as the English familiarly call a very decent private hotel, kept by a veteran of that name, who has the reputation, and I believe deservedly, of being the most civil, as well as the most hospitable of innkeepers: but there too I failed to obtain admission, as the house was filled with Englishmen, three of whom were waiting for the packet to Trieste. The serjeant, however, sent out a friend to conduct me to a locanda, or lodging-house; and as I was going along the street we were met by a Greek priest, who offered to provide me with an apartment in his own house. I immediately accepted his offer, and followed him to a respectable house, where he assigned me the best room he had at his disposal. It was not particularly elegant, but I was contented with its appearance; and having arranged my _personnel_ I went forth to see the town, in which I found myself at once at home, as red coats, English artillerymen, and the beautiful Irish brogue, told me, without much circumlocution, that I was under the protection of a powerful British garrison.

♦ SITUATION OF CORFU ♦

In a few years, Corfu will be a second Gibraltar. The works already completed, and those which have been commenced will, when the whole shall be perfected, render that position impregnable, if so unmilitary a critic as myself may presume to form a judgment on the matter. The situation of Corfu is one almost of matchless beauty. To me its ample harbour, the fortified island by which it is protected on the south-east, its fine opening towards the Adriatic, its Acropolis, with a lighthouse that seems lifted to the sky, its position with relation to the ranges of Pindus, Bucintro, and Tepelene on the Albanian shore, confer upon it a variety and grandeur of scenery, scarcely inferior to that which has gained so much admiration for the Bay of Naples.

♦ A DAY LATE ♦

I paid my respects to the Lord High Commissioner (Lord Nugent), whom I was glad to find in excellent health and spirits. He desired that I should join his family circle at dinner, where I found that I had just been one day too late to witness two of the most interesting spectacles that had been exhibited for many years in the Ionian islands. The previous day had been celebrated by a species of tournament peculiar to the islands, in which some of the native young noblemen, and the officers of our garrison, clothed in splendid armour, had contended for prizes, the value of which must have been not a little augmented in the estimation of the victors when presented to them by the hand of Lady Nugent, whose personal accomplishments and exquisite literary taste have been rendered familiar to us all by more than one standard production in our language. The same evening a fancy ball took place at the palace, a spacious and very handsome edifice, well calculated for the display of every kind of hospitality; and I must say that I was for once disposed to bring my stars to account for depriving me of the pleasure, which I should have felt had I been in Corfu twenty-four hours sooner, when I heard from Lady Georgiana Hill of the assemblage of beauty, and of gay and various costumes which had graced the rooms on that occasion. Lady Arundel, who happened to be on a visit to her brother at the time, was ill-prepared, I fear, for these festive scenes; her widow’s weeds still expressed, in their deep under-tones of grief, a calamity, the extent of which I was myself enabled to appreciate, as I had known something of the estimable virtues by which the late Lord Arundel had been so eminently distinguished.

♦ COMPLAINTS ♦

The English mercantile residents at Corfu with whom I happened to come in contact during my very limited sojourn amongst them, were loud in their complaints that Ionians were uniformly preferred to them, whenever the Lord High Commissioner had any appointments to bestow. I plainly told them that their complaints appeared to me to be most unreasonable; that it was the first duty of that officer to protect the Ionian people in all their civil rights and privileges; that the islands were not English settlements, nor intended ever to become so; and that the true policy of England with reference to these states was, to develop all their resources; to consider them as Greek in every sense of the word; to diffuse amongst them the blessings of civilization; to foster and extend their commerce; to establish an intimate alliance between them and their brethren under the sceptre of Otho, and to assist in accelerating the prosperity of the new Greek monarchy, by presenting models for it in all the departments of government and of public economy among the Ionian people.

♦ COMMERCE ♦

Another set of persons were also strong in their denunciations against Lord Nugent’s administration, whose occupation he had certainly very seriously, and for the Islands very happily, ruined. These were Jews and jobbers of the very worst description, who realized large incomes every year by the following means. The principal produce of the Islands, so far as their commerce with England is concerned, consists of currants. If any body be entitled to the largest proportion of profit which the fruit is capable of yielding, I apprehend it is the owner, or cultivator of the soil on which it grows. It so happened, however, that hitherto the agriculturist was the only party who became more distressed every year, while he saw at Corfu and elsewhere, a class of commission-merchants acquiring the opulence that really belonged to himself. When the quantity of the crop was ascertainable, these men combined together to fix a price for it amongst themselves, which they tendered to the cultivators, and as the latter generally stood in need every year of an advance by way of loan upon his crop, he had no alternative but to accept their terms, or to let his currants rot upon the ground. The consequence was, that whatever was the maximum of price which the commission-merchants exacted from the foreign purchasers, the minimum, affording a miserable return for his expenses and labour, was sure to be the lot of the grower.

♦ MONOPOLY ♦

This was not all. The commission-merchants, having secured a monopoly by their loans to the grower, sold the produce at the highest possible prices to the British importer, or rather to the British consumer; for the said importer was in most cases the commission-merchant under his own or another name. Then an enormous tax, framed on the very worst principles of economy, was imposed on the currants on their exportation from the Islands, and on their importation into England.

These were all great evils. Lord Nugent redressed them in the following manner:--He lent from the treasury of the states to the growers the sums of which they stood in need, in order to get in their crops: he thus enabled them to go into the market themselves, and to dispose of their produce to the highest bidder. But there was no competition--the jobbers combined to prevent it, and again fixed their own prices. Lord Nugent then lent capital to respectable natives, who embarked in the trade, and who found themselves enabled, by this assistance, to carry it on upon principles equitably advantageous to all parties. Thus the monopoly which had for a century weighed down the great capabilities of the Ionian Islands was completely destroyed. His Lordship also, through the Legislature, had the export duty reduced to a reasonable amount, and convinced the British Government that the import duty ought to be lessened in proportion, which was done; and by this course of judicious policy, though his Lordship may have made some irreconcilable enemies, he has undoubtedly secured to his conscience the gratifying reflection, that during the too brief period of his administration, he has done more for the real amelioration of the Ionian Islands than all his predecessors put together.

♦ IMPROVEMENTS ♦

In establishing steam-communication between the Islands themselves, as well as between the Ionian ports and those of Greece and Italy, Lord Nugent has also contributed essentially to open prospects of active and beneficial commerce to those dependencies of Great Britain, which they could scarcely have contemplated when they were placed under our protection. But above all, in mitigating the feudal horrors of their penal code, he has shown himself, at the head of the Ionian government, in the same character which he had uniformly sustained as the representative of the people in the British parliament--the inflexible unwearied advocate of justice tempered by mercy, of equal rights for all classes in the state, and of such stern safeguards against the encroachments of despotism upon the lawful privileges of the subject, as his own Hampden would have advocated, or if necessary, have demanded at the hazard even of his freedom.

♦ LORD NUGENT ♦

Judging by all that I heard at Corfu--from his enemies, be it observed, rather than from his friends--and by all that I have since learned of Lord Nugent’s Ionian administration, I do most sincerely regret that his high sense of what he owed to his party, induced him prematurely to resign his office before the return of Lord Melbourne to the chieftaincy of the Government. Nor was it to me the least interesting passage in the recent biography of this nobleman, that the same person whom I had seen towards the close of November last in the palace of Corfu, surrounded by princely splendour, I found, a few days ago, in a small parlour in Grosvenor Street, whose principal ornaments were some old Greek urns and fragments of armour--the only symbols, I believe, of the increase to his fortune with which he has returned from his late vice-royalty.

♦ GARRISON LIBRARY ♦

There is an excellent garrison library near the palace at Corfu. I was extremely anxious to read the latest newspapers from England; but not happening to have any military acquaintance in the garrison, I presented my card at the door, and discovered, very much to my satisfaction, that I had already secured myself an admission to the institution by the publication of my “Visit to Spain,” which the librarian was so good as to say had rendered any further introduction in my favour unnecessary. He shewed me the book on the shelves. He further informed me of a circumstance of which I had been previously ignorant, that I was the relative of a nobleman whose name I bear--at least he said that when that individual was lately at Corfu, he expressed his belief that the author of the work in question was one of his kindred. It is very pleasant for a literary man to find that in places where he is personally unknown, his exertions may have rendered his name acceptable to persons of so much private worth as the nobleman to whom I allude, and with whom I have never, by any chance, had the slightest communication. Neither have I any sort of claim to the honour which he conferred upon me: but still it is gratifying in these degenerate days of literary influence to observe, that intellect has its claims upon rank, as well as consanguinity, and that even when those claims are not preferred, and, indeed, are not thought of, they are ready to be acknowledged.

♦ NEWSPAPERS ♦

However, I would not break through the garrison rule of an introduction, and Mr. Matthias of the Artillery, who happened to be present, undertook to be my sponsor. The papers did not come down later than the 12th of November, but they contained a great mass of intelligence with which I had been unacquainted.

I could have spent some weeks with great pleasure at Corfu, but the time of the Austrian packet being expired, I returned to my berth on the 26th (November). The three Englishmen, of whom I had already heard at Sergeant Taylor’s, were in the cabin. We were under weigh at four o’clock A.M. the following morning, but there being scarcely any wind, we loitered all day in the canal of Corfu.

♦ A CHARACTER ♦

We all soon discovered that we had a _character_ on-board, who was likely to afford us some amusement during our voyage. He was dressed in blue fustian trowsers, a shirt, a black serge cassock, a shovel hat, and a very scanty mantle of the same material as his cassock, scarcely reaching below his shoulders. He said he was a Frenchman; that he had been educated for the church at the college of Limoges; that he had received deacon’s orders. He had had an inspiration, he assured us, which bade him perform a pilgrimage to the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem, and he had gone as far as Alexandria for that purpose; but having been informed at that place by his consul, that the plague would be very likely to dispose of him if he went much farther, he prudently postponed his pilgrimage, and was now on his return to France. His great hat, which had evidently seen much service, he wore only on occasions of state; his ordinary head-dress was a silk handkerchief tied tightly round his forehead, which rather augmented the caricature expression of his round jolly-looking face. He had his berth forward; but as he really was a well-educated man, and a most eccentric fellow in every way, we frequently drew him out, whenever he was not inclined, though that happened very rarely--to exhibit himself for our entertainment.

♦ A MISSION ♦

We sent for the deacon in the evening, and offered him some punch; but he preferred the unadulterated liquor, which soon opened all the sources of his eloquence. He informed us that he had a mission to preach to the heathens, and favoured us with some of the harangues by which he had meditated to convert them. They were very droll; but he argued that drollery was often more convincing than a homily, and it was his peculiar mission to laugh the Arabs out of their errors. We asked him in what language he meant to address them, as it was possible they might not understand French. To which he replied, with a mystic shrug of the shoulders, that wherever he went the French language would be instantly known to every body by _inspiration_; indeed, it was the only language now spoken in Paradise, and would soon become universal upon earth!

On the 28th we were still stationary--not a breath of wind in any part of the heavens--the day dark, rainy, and miserable. Better hopes came with the ensuing morning, when the sun shone warmly through a perfectly cloudless sky. Light winds sprung up, and wafted us at length quietly beyond the canal of Corfu. We fired in vain at two cormorants who were perched at some distance on a rock, engaged in fishing, while, as usual, a gull acted as their sentinel, doubtless expecting to be well paid for his trouble. During the night we made about seventy miles, and proceeded on the 30th at a fair rate until about noon, when the wind changed from the south to the north-west--that is to say, right against us. The vessel rolled a good deal, and though at three o’clock we all sat down to dinner as usual, the table was soon thinned of its guests. Strange to say, the doctor attached to the packet was the first to surrender--he was followed by my three English fellow-passengers--and the captain, the two lieutenants, and I, had the dessert to ourselves.

♦ VOYAGE ♦

December came, as it ought to do, with a “fine frosty morning,” as the extinct watchmen used to say; the wind still either north-west or north-east; in either way almost equally hostile to our right course. We were steering for Ragusa, but we had no chance of “progressing;” and so we beat about the whole day and the whole of the ensuing night: in the morning we had the felicity to observe that we had “advanced backwards;” we were perfectly becalmed the whole day.

♦ ATMOSPHERIC DELUSION ♦

A magnificent atmospheric delusion appeared in the western sky the whole evening. The sun set behind a field of broken clouds, which seemed to extend along the whole of the Italian side of the Adriatic. The fragments of vapour were fixed, and precisely resembled a dense and boundless forest of pines. The trunks, some biforked, the branches, the rounded tops, here thickly clustering behind one another, there opening vistas through the depths of the shade behind, looked as if Nature were engaged in one of her sublimest moods of study for some exhibition worthy of another sphere.

While we were gazing with silent admiration at this wondrous scene, the sun shot his parting rays upward from below the horizon, and pointed to the new moon, which, with the evening star just above it, reminded me of the skies of Turkey and the Ægean.

On the evening of the 3d we entered the small, but secure, interesting harbour of Gravosa, near Ragusa, but were not allowed to land, on account of quarantine. Luckily the packet had the privilege of taking a “health officer” on-board at this place; and from the day of his coming on-board we were entitled to begin our period of quarantine, fourteen days, which, had we arrived at Trieste, we should have had to spend in the Lazaretto. The officer came on-board the same evening. We were fortunate in finding shelter at Gravosa, as, during the whole night, the wind blew fiercely from the north; so much so, that, even sheltered as we were by lofty hills on all sides, so agitated was the sea in the harbour, that we were obliged to throw out a second anchor to keep the vessel in her station. The day was spent in laying in a fresh stock of provisions of all sorts, as the captain now clearly foresaw that our voyage was likely to be prolonged beyond the ordinary period.

♦ RAGUSA ♦

We had each a store of books which we exchanged with each other; and these, with walks on the deck, the time spent at meals, and by my friends at their pipes and cigars, our evening whist parties, and the closing glass of punch, enabled us to wear through these delays better than we could have expected. The still remaining additional consolation was also at hand, that our quarantine was every hour diminishing, and that it was much more agreeable even to count it on-board the packet at Gravosa, than in the lazaretto at Trieste.

♦ CONTRARY WINDS ♦

The neighbourhood of the Dalmatian shore also enabled us to vary our mode of living a little: fresh grapes and apples, and even tripe soup, and beef steaks, appended or prefixed to a bottle of sherry or champagne, were not unwelcome to such a party as we happened to be--an extremely pleasant party too, I must add, to the pleasures of which the officers of the vessel added very considerably by their uniform civility, and their disposition to share in all our amusements.

We weighed anchor once more on the morning of the 6th of December; but though we advanced a little way with a slight south wind, we were not fifty miles from Ragusa at noon on the 7th, when the wind became due west. We tacked about the whole day, which was as warm and as brilliant as an English day in spring.

8th. Wind north-west. We were opposite the island of Cazza, about 120 miles from Ragusa; the day so warm that when we sat in the cabin, we were obliged to have the top lights open. The heat became so oppressive at night that we remained to a late hour on deck looking at the effect of the moon, in her first quarter, shining on the waves. Those that came sparkling near us soon lost their light: but the more distant undulations seemed an unchanging path of chased and solid silver.

♦ WATER-SPOUT ♦

9th. Made only twenty miles during the night, having passed the large island of Lissa. About eight o’clock A.M. a breeze came to our assistance from the south-east, and enabled us to move on at the rate of six knots an hour. Dense clouds hung over the isle of Lesina behind us; and while we were examining them, with a view to conjecture how they might affect the weather, they discharged themselves of an enormous volume of water, by means of two successive waterspouts, each of which looked to us, who happily were at a distance, like a cable suspended from the sky, and waving in the wind. We distinctly saw the sea rise to meet the descending torrent, which came down from the clouds as if poured through a tunnel.

The Doctor turned pale when he witnessed this splendid phenomenon, remarking, that if it had overtaken the _Vigilante_, we should have been speedily overwhelmed in the sea. His remark would have been just if the crew were devoid of the energy necessary to urge the vessel beyond the reach of the deluge; or if science and experience had not taught our officers that we might easily dissipate its force by a few discharges of cannon. We had eight large brass guns on-board, which might in a moment cause such a concussion in the atmosphere as to render the water-spout perfectly harmless. As it happened, however, we were rather more pleased to have had the opportunity of witnessing that rare and very striking operation from a more advantageous point of observation, if it were only for that effect which Campbell spoke of when he said that

“Distance lends enchantment to the view.”