THE STRAITS AND ARCHES. BY DAVID HANNAY. of what is odious in bad administration and destructive in piracy, which is the natural offspring of vicious rule. In earlier times than the Middle Ages, and, in fact, almost to our days, the pirate was a known and common danger in the Cyclades which lie round Delos, and among the Sporades which fringe the coast of Asia Minor. To the Greeks he was familiar, and if the Roman Empire made a naval station at Carpathos, the Scarpanto of the moderns, one reason was that this arid rock lies between Rhodes and Crete, and is conveniently placed to be a post for galleys told off to watch for and pounce upon skimmers of the sea coming and going. But the ancient Greeks and Romans lived very long before the British seaman WHEN the British sailor of old was outward bound to the Mediterranean, he said he was going on a voyage to "The Straits or (when not and) "The Arches." He ranked all the Western waters and coasts under the first name, and all the Eastern under the second. The whole sea, so Admiral Smyth truly says, may be called a vast strait gulf." The Firth of Forth westward of Queensferry and the Firth of Tay all along are strait gulfs estuaries with a narrow entrance. But in old sea terminology, it is probable that nothing more was meant than the half or so of the Mediterranean which you reach directly by way of Gibraltar. The Arches, for their part, were just short for archipelago, but only for that particular swarm of islands which ranges east--who alone concerns us here— ward from the Morea to the southern shores of Asia Minor and towards Syria. The sailor did not abbreviate other archipelagos. When he said he was bound for the Arches, nobody would suppose that he meant the world of islands eastward of Sumatra, or the Antilles. Now the Arches presented a kind of concentration of the whole Mediterranean. All its good and its evil were drawn together, and of the second there was much in the form VOL. CCXXII.-NO. MCCCXLI. began to frequent the Levant. Our present business is with our own man, with what he saw and did, his merits and his sins. When the founders of the Levant Company came to look at the field they were to work, they were met, first and foremost, by what is there nowthe natural conditions. Our Admiral W. H. Smyth, who carried out the only survey of the Mediterranean we had so far attempted, gives a sum D 2 "Such is the archipelago, the navigation of which is which is easy and pleasing enough in general, most of the islands being high, as well as precipitous and bold-to (i.e., the water is deep up to the land, and free from shoals), with a delicious climate. But a good look-out must be kept, for there are very sudden and fresh squalls; and at times there is much bad and even dangerous weather in the winter. In such cases, the waves, having little room to extend themselves, make a confused sea, rising to a considerable height, and breaking with fury against opposing coasts and rocks. Moreover, there is a very great depth of water between the isles-usually no bottom with 150 fathoms of line out at a short distance from the shore. These interesting islands are thinly peopled, and some of them may indeed be considered as scarcely inhabited. There is, however, an animated traffic, the imports being suited to the wants and wishes of the islanders, to most of whom necessity has given a seafaring disposition." mary which is too good not lady's sea, and therefore liable to be quoted. to occasional tantrums, just enough to train you to keep a sharp look-out to windward, and stand by to shorten sail in a smart way. The dangers of winter weather need hardly be considered, for at that season the trading ships of old were mostly in port. The sea rover could lay his boat up for an overhaul, could take his rest "aswing with good tobacco in a net between the trees or under a roof, and could "listen to the roar of the breakers" at the foot of the cliff with a sense of full security. The inhabitants were quite equal to forming the basis of piratical crews. Even those wicked German critics, Fallmerayer and other sinners, who have insulted modern Greeks by giving 80 many plausible - looking reasons for denying that they descend from the Hellenes, allow that if the Hellenic blood still flows pure anywhere it is in the veins of the islanders. The ancient Greek was a pirate in his mother's womb. Even supposing that the islesmen are Hellenic, they have been freely recruited by other wandering elements. All such as do naturally tend to the cave of Adullam have found their advantage in "going to the Levant." Did not our friend Admiral Smyth come across a certain Murad Reis, who commanded the "fleet "of the Basha of Tripoli? And did he not learn that Murad Reis was in sad fact a renegade Scot of the name of Lyell? And of such as he Here was a home for all mariners, and more especially for such as were of predatory disposition-plenty of water, a clean shore, much visible high land, a good supply of anchorages, population enough to supply you with food and refuges, which are also takingoff places for a cruise. It is a there has never been any lack in the Arches. The conditions of their life made seamen of them. They helped to row the galleys of St Mark, though the Venetian captains did not like them, for they were dirty, were sea lawyers, and given to desertion. But, then, they had been bred early to the sea and to tugging at the oar, could stand exposure, and go on rowing when Dalmatians or Venetians had broken down. Two conditions only could have kept the Arches free of piracy. One would have been that they lay far off on the road to nowhere. But they lie across, or just on, the flank of all the trade routes of the eastern Mediterranean from the Dardanelles to Egypt, and from Italy to Syria. The other was that the islands should be in the hands of a power capable of enforcing law and order, and resolved to shut out the pirate from all refuges and markets, for the ruffian must have food and rest, and he plunders to sell. From the decline of the Eastern Empire, which may fairly be said to have been born in a state of senile decay, down to about the day before yesterday, there was no government in the Arches-except what was bad. given to them for a prey and for a spoil; retaliating Christians, who could see no sin in plundering and killing Mahometans; and on the top of it, and perhaps the worst of it all, came the shifting fritter of little "Latin municipalities which were born out of the decadence and corruption of the Crusades. The traders of the Italian cities, with Venice and Genoa at their head, plundered one another and all others. The Knights of the Hospital, or of St John, who called themselves "The Religion," raided indefatigably from their headquarters at Rhodes. When Solyman the Magnificent, or Magnanimous, drove them from their beautiful island in 1520, he had, as a ruler, a most valid excuse. After they were established in Malta by the Emperor Charles V., they went on as before. How did commerce survive at all, and how did the travellers we hear of contrive to move about when Sallee rovers were prowling just outside the Straits of Gibraltar, when the Algerines infested the western Mediterranean, and when the seas from Crete to the Dardanelles were so full of pirates that all who could afford the expense took the long and costly overland route when they were bound to go to Constantinople? As for the trade, we have to bear in mind that the plunderers were always ready to sell what they had taken by violence. They robbed in Because they lay on or just beside the seaways, they were swept by every conquering and destructive horde on its way from east to west, or west to east. Barbarous invaders of the empire, Moslem fanatics who firmly held the doctrine that the Christian was one place and traded in an other. The Knights of the Hospital, or of St John, or of Malta, as they were variously called, went to Tripoli to dispose of what they had gained in the archipelago. And as they did, so did others. There was a regular commerce largely conducted by Jews, who, in fact, financed the pirate by buying from him, and making their profit by selling elsewhere. The prevalence of this practice among the Jews need not be quoted as a proof of a double dose of original sin in them. Speculators from London did the same thing among the pirates on the west coast of Ireland. The traders fostered the evil from which they suffered by ransoming their ships and cargoes, and by buying back goods which had been taken. This was notoriously the resource of the merchants of Marseilles and of Provence in general. In the troubled times of the reign of Louis XIII. and the Fronde, they were not protected by their Government, and they shifted for themselves. As a rule they sailed in small vessels with weak crews, and could make but little resistance. When pirates of whom not a few came from Majorca-were signalled by the look-out on the towers along the coast, they sent out messengers to bribe them to go away. The English and Dutch Levant Companies did better, largely because their Governments did not interfere with them, as the French Government did with the armaments of its subjects. They sent out larger vessels, some of them armed with twenty guns and well manned. Such ships were formidable to the thieving rascals, and in the more dangerous parts they went four or five together in convoy. There was also a petty coast trade conducted by natives who were not much worth plundering, and were expert in creeping along the coast and in taking cover. By working the two together, and with some help from luck, an adventurous tourist could travel far and wide. Our countryman, Mr George Sandys, son of an Archbishop of York, and also the translator of Ovid, shows how the feat could be achieved. He left home "hard upon the time when that execrable murder was committed upon the person of Henry the Fourth by an obscure varlet "-that is to say, in 1610. He travelled overland to Venice. There he shipped in the little Defence of London, and sailed to Zante. The Defence was safe enough so long as she was within the Adriatic. The republic was sorely declined, but the galleys of St Mark were a power within their own sea. From Zante she would sail in company with other vessels, which joined there to make the voyage home together. Mr Sandys found. another English ship at Zante, the Great Exchange of London, bound to Chio on her way to Tripoli. She was presumably big enough, and sufficiently well gunned and manned, to take care of herself. And now he did a risky thing. Not wishing to be detained at Chio while the Great Exchange was transacting business, he hired a Greek who spoke a little broken English to be his dragoman, and took a passage in a small coaster, which he says was named the Armado of Simo, a small island near Rhodes. She was bound to Constantinople with sponges. Most of Mr Sandys' pages are devoted to heathen gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, and are chiefly interesting because they show how utterly unable the best educated men of his time (he was an Oxford man and a classical scholar) were to distinguish between mythology, poetry, and history. But he made room for an account of his cruise, written shrewdly and in good temper. He had, indeed, cause to draw on his fund of cheerful patience. The Armado of Simo was too small and weak not only to fight, but to tackle bad weather. When her Greek skipper and crew saw a sail at a distance they bolted into a creek. So they did at every capful of wind. While weather-bound they performed curious ceremonies, one grovelling on the beach in a woman's dress, and others dancing round him and chanting incantations to secure a fair breeze. Still crawling along and scuttling to cover, they did reach the Dardanelles, where they were safe. The Turk, too, was far on his de cline, but he could keep some order near his capital. At any distance from it he was weak enough. Three armed galleys belonging to the Grand Duke of Tuscany could cut the seaway to Egypt so effectually that the Grand Turk was reduced to bring his tribute to his treasury by a long march, and under a strong guard, through Syria and Asia Minor. This proof of his weakness was given before the great outbreak of anarchy and rebellion which came a few years after the travels of Mr Sandys, and after being savagely beaten down by Murad IV., broke out worse than ever in the eighteenth century. The poor little Armado of Simo was not to blame for running. She was too feeble to fight anything, however contemptible; and, as a matter of fact, most of the pests of the Levant were beneath contempt. Nothing could well be less like the romantic heroes of Victor Hugo or Byron-men of one virtue and a thousand crimes, who roamed, in verse, o'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea-than the actual skippers and men of a crusal" as drawn by an unlucky Mr Roberts, who had the misfortune to be trapped into one of them. "Crusal," one sees easily enough, was cruiser. The adventurers, so-called, sailed with some makeshift for a commission, begged or bought in Italy. Some came from Genoa, some from Leghorn, which the Grand Dukes of Tuscany had turned |