Chapter 33 - Page 2

business, but they all had the charity to decline the dreary honor, and
veneration enough for Greece's ancient greatness to refuse to mock her
sorrowful rags and dirt with a tinsel throne in this day of her
humiliation--till they came to this young Danish George, and he took it.
He has finished the splendid palace I saw in the radiant moonlight the
other night, and is doing many other things for the salvation of Greece,
they say.

We sailed through the barren Archipelago, and into the narrow channel
they sometimes call the Dardanelles and sometimes the Hellespont. This
part of the country is rich in historic reminiscences, and poor as Sahara
in every thing else. For instance, as we approached the Dardanelles, we
coasted along the Plains of Troy and past the mouth of the Scamander; we
saw where Troy had stood (in the distance,) and where it does not stand
now--a city that perished when the world was young. The poor Trojans are
all dead, now. They were born too late to see Noah's ark, and died too
soon to see our menagerie. We saw where Agamemnon's fleets rendezvoused,
and away inland a mountain which the map said was Mount Ida. Within the
Hellespont we saw where the original first shoddy contract mentioned in
history was carried out, and the "parties of the second part" gently
rebuked by Xerxes. I speak of the famous bridge of boats which Xerxes
ordered to be built over the narrowest part of the Hellespont (where it
is only two or three miles wide.) A moderate gale destroyed the flimsy
structure, and the King, thinking that to publicly rebuke the contractors
might have a good effect on the next set, called them out before the army
and had them beheaded. In the next ten minutes he let a new contract for
the bridge. It has been observed by ancient writers that the second
bridge was a very good bridge. Xerxes crossed his host of five millions
of men on it, and if it had not been purposely destroyed, it would
probably have been there yet. If our Government would rebuke some of our
shoddy contractors occasionally, it might work much good. In the
Hellespont we saw where Leander and Lord Byron swam across, the one to
see her upon whom his soul's affections were fixed with a devotion that
only death could impair, and the other merely for a flyer, as Jack says.
We had two noted tombs near us, too. On one shore slept Ajax, and on the
other Hecuba.

We had water batteries and forts on both sides of the Hellespont, flying
the crimson flag of Turkey, with its white crescent, and occasionally a
village, and sometimes a train of camels; we had all these to look at
till we entered the broad sea of Marmora, and then the land soon fading
from view, we resumed euchre and whist once more.

We dropped