uncovered, and dressed in her wedding clothes. Her mouth was filled with cotton: it is a universal custom among the nations of the East, to stop closely with cotton every aperture of the body; and the Greeks never fail, when a person has expired, to open doors and windows, in order that the angels may come in and go out freely.

'A great number of persons formed the procession. In towns, hired female mourners vent plaintive cries; but this luxury of grief is unknown in the greater part of the islands of the Archipelago; no one is paid to cry, and people cry themselves with much bitterness. The female relations of the dead woman were particularly distinguishable, from the excess of their groans and the movements of their affliction; they struck and tore their breasts; their long hair, unbraided and undressed, fell loose on their shoulders and neck, and from time to time they pulled off locks of it; the blood gushed from their head, and their tears were mingled with the drops of blood which flowed from their cheeks, torn by their nails. It is not possible to paint the agitation of soul with which these feeling and loving women were transported; and I was so struck by it, that I shall long preserve the impression of melancholy left on my mind by the violence of their affliction.'

After describing several small unimportant isles, our French author describes the island of Patmos, which name says he has been disfigured by our navigators into that of Saint Jean de Patino, which exhibits its arid rocks and numerous capes. It is celebrated in ecclesiastical history, from the exile of St. John, and still more from the visions and revelations which he there received, and which served him for composing the Apocalypse. Some caloyers, inhabitants of a vast monastery built on an eminence, and which, at the first view, one would be tempted to take for a fortress, true disciples of stupid ignorance, still shew the grotto where the saint wrote his mysterious book, and even the hole in the wall through which he received the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.

There is no library in this convent; and of what utility would it be, among people who, for the most part cannot read? Out of eighty monks who reside there, M. de ChoiseulVOL. IV.--(69) 2 C

Gouffier found only three who knew how to read, but who made little use of that knowledge. It is, nevertheless this haunt of brutality and ignorance, where the alphabet is scarcely known, which has been represented recently as a place famous for its schools of literature.

The island of Patmos is little more than six leagues in circuit; considerably longer than broad, its direction is from north to south; its form is very irregular. Its coasts are divided by a multitude of gulfs and coves, and are remarkable for the number of good harbours which they present to navigators, and among which that of Scala is one of the finest in the Archipelago. Whatever advantages may be derived from its harbours by a country whose position marks it out for a place of trade, wretchedness has not, on that account, the less got possession of Patmos. Vallies which might insure abundance, are uncultivated, and from their state of abandonment and nakedness, offer, with the hills by which they are surrounded, only the same afflicting tint of ruggedness and misfortune. Population, which follows the chances of agriculture and industry, is there singularly diminished; and, while the monasteries swarm with sluggards, the fields become deserts. In the summer, few men remain here; they almost all go and seek far off means of subsistence, or carry on with their caïques, a traffic which feeds, but does not enrich them. The women remain intrusted with domestic cares, and to make the most of a few pieces of land, during the absence of their fathers or husbands; and this timid tribe hide and shut themselves up, when they see strangers land in their island.

Having visited Myconi, and some other islets, our traveller proceeds A sort of religious tremor takes possession of the mind, when, on quitting the island of Myconi, one makes sail to the west, and approaches an island very small, but which was in antiquity the most celebrated of all; a sacred spot, the cradle of Apollo and Diana, the subject of the songs of the most famous poets, and the object of the veneration of the ancients, who came thither to adore Apollo in a temple, one of the most superb edifices on earth, and the majestic ornament of the most magnificent city in the world. Who has not heard

of the wonders of Delos, of its monuments, of its brilliant population, of the magnificent elegance of its architecture? Who, with a taste for the beautiful, has not, in the annals of the happy days of Greece, greedily sought the description of so many miracles of art? I shall not here repeat what may be read in several works of great merit, among which that of Barthelemi ought in my opinion, to hold the first rank.

'But the island of Delos, formerly so opulent, and where were celebrated with so much pomp religious ceremonies, in presence of an immense concourse who repaired thither from all points of the East, is now no longer any thing but a desert abandoned to filthy animals and covered with ruins and rubbish. Pirates and robbers are almost the only men who land there; they go thither to share the fruit of their plunder, or concert new schemes of rapine, seated on fragments of altars where incense and perfumes burnt in honour of the god of day.

The ruins of Delos, the imposing remains of the most beautiful edifices of which ancient Greece was proud, are now no longer what they were at the periods when modern travellers visited and described them. They themselves have their ruins, and they owe this fresh degradation to the profane barbarism of people who came thither to take materials for building their houses, or to wretched Turkish sculptors, who carry off every year precious pieces, in order to make of them those little pillars surmounted by a turban, which the Mahometans erect over the grave of the dead. The name even of Delos is forgotten in the seas where it had acquired so great a celebrity. The Greeks at this day name Dili the two islands of Delos, and our navigators distinguish them by the denomination of Isdiles, Les Isdiles.

In the isle of Scio the town is tolerably large and well built; it is the work of the Genoese, who for a long time had the whole island in their possession. The ancient town, which, as well as the island, bore the name of Chios or Chio, was placed on the summit of a mountain. The modern town is at the foot of this same mountain, by the sea-side, and its situation is thence become much more agreeable. The Greeks who inhabit it are still as in Bélon's time, the most polite, the most

affable, the most gay, and perhaps, the most witty of all the Greeks. The women there are charming, and, as Bélon says, very courteous. There are none, perhaps, who have such engaging manners; and, to see them at the doors of their houses, press strangers to enter with them, pull them even by the arm, and invite them with much sprightliness, we cannot, at first, avoid conceiving an improper opinion of women so free in appearance. But all these demonstrations, which, among us, are the height of depravity, are, at Scio, no more than ebullitions of an affectionate and hospitable heart, and of the wish to derive some advantage from the works on which they employ themselves; and any one would be singularly deceived, if, emboldened by the semblance of enticements, he should attempt to take an unfair advantage of women, who introduce strangers into their houses with a frankness which, from a habit of corruption, is reckoned a want of reserve. Under appearances the most attractive, and at the same time the most familiar and engaging, the seducer would, in an easy tete-a-tete, meet with only the imposing resistance of the most rigid virtue, and the shame of being mistaken.

These women so frank, but at the same time so virtuous, knit with silk several sorts of works, and particularly handsome purses. The desire of selling them has induced those who work them, to learn to offer them in the language of all, the nations which traffic in the Levant; and a Frenchman, as well as an Italian and a Swede, heard himself addressed from all quarters, in his language, when he passed in the streets of Scio, "Sir, Sir, come and see some handsome purses!" I bought some of these purses at Scio; the handsomest, which are also the largest, cost me not three livres a piece, and they could not be procured in France for more than double that price.'

After leaving Scio, M. Sonnini landed in Tenedos. The possession of this island' he observes which is situated near the mouth of the channel of the Dardanelles, might alone involve the loss of Constantinople; from this point would be formed the blockade of that great city, with the more facility, as the channel between the continent and Tenedos is, correctly speaking, only a large roadstead, where ships may lie at anchor,

ready to get under sail, and stop those which should attempt to penetrate into the strait of the Dardanelles. But the Ottoman government, incapable of feeling the importance of this advantageous port, seems to watch it with still greater negligence than other places whose preservation would be less useful. The wines of Tenedos are almost the sole trade of the island: here are made muscadine wines, which are not inferior to those of Samos.'

Our learned and entertaining traveller next visited the town of Salonica, which has been often described. From thence he made an excursion to mount Olympus. After viewing this celebrated mountain, he returned to Salonica, and then sailed for France, after an absence and a journey of four years.