I Think That This Testing Of The Poet's Words By
Map And Compass May Have Shaken A Little Of My Faith In The
Completeness Of His Knowledge.
Well, now I had come; there to the
south was Tenedos, and here at my side was Imbros, all right, and
according to the map, but aloft over Imbros, aloft in a far-away
heaven, was Samothrace, the watch-tower of Neptune!
So Homer had appointed it, and so it was; the map was correct
enough, but could not, like Homer, convey THE WHOLE TRUTH. Thus
vain and false are the mere human surmises and doubts which clash
with Homeric writ!
Nobody whose mind had not been reduced to the most deplorable
logical condition could look upon this beautiful congruity betwixt
the Iliad and the material world and yet bear to suppose that the
poet may have learned the features of the coast from mere hearsay;
now then, I believed; now I knew that Homer had PASSED ALONG HERE,
that this vision of Samothrace over-towering the nearer island was
common to him and to me.
After a journey of some few days by the route of Adramiti and
Pergamo we reached Smyrna. The letters which Methley here received
obliged him to return to England.
CHAPTER V - INFIDEL SMYRNA
Smyrna, or Giaour Izmir, "Infidel Smyrna," as the Mussulmans call
it, is the main point of commercial contact betwixt Europe and
Asia. You are there surrounded by the people, and the confused
customs of many and various nations; you see the fussy European
adopting the East, and calming his restlessness with the long
Turkish "pipe of tranquillity"; you see Jews offering services, and
receiving blows; {8} on one side you have a fellow whose dress and
beard would give you a good idea of the true Oriental, if it were
not for the gobe-mouche expression of countenance with which he is
swallowing an article in the National; and there, just by, is a
genuine Osmanlee, smoking away with all the majesty of a sultan,
but before you have time to admire sufficiently his tranquil
dignity, and his soft Asiatic repose, the poor old fellow is
ruthlessly "run down" by an English midshipman, who has set sail on
a Smyrna hack. Such are the incongruities of the "infidel city" at
ordinary times; but when I was there, our friend Carrigaholt had
imported himself and his oddities as an accession to the other and
inferior wonders of Smyrna.
I was sitting alone in my room one day at Constantinople, when I
heard Methley approaching my door with shouts of laughter and
welcome, and presently I recognised that peculiar cry by which our
friend Carrigaholt expresses his emotions; he soon explained to us
the final causes by which the fates had worked out their wonderful
purpose of bringing him to Constantinople. He was always, you
know, very fond of sailing, but he had got into such sad scrapes
(including, I think, a lawsuit) on account of his last yacht, that
he took it into his head to have a cruise in a merchant vessel, so
he went to Liverpool, and looked through the craft lying ready to
sail, till he found a smart schooner that perfectly suited his
taste.
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