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TRAVELS IN GREECE.

CHAP. I.

Our bark-We leave Smyrna-The sails and yards-We put into a creek-The vintage begun-Off Psyra-A stormThe night-We gain a port in Eubea--Sail by Carystus-In a creek of Attica.

THE bark, engaged for our voyage from Smyrna to Athens, was one belonging to Hydre, a small island, or rather rock, near Scyllæum, a promontory of the Peloponnesus, opposite to Sunium in Attica. It had two masts, with fourteen men. The hire was one hundred piasters; and we agreed to pay a piaster and a half a day, if we did not depart within ten days; and also, if we tarried beyond three days at Sunium or Ægina, at which places we purposed to touch in our way.

Our baggage and provisions were put on board on Tuesday, August 20, 1765. A gentle land-breeze, as usual, sprung up about midnight. We bade adieu to our friends, the English consul, and Mr. Lee, who accompanied us to our boat; which rowed to the Frank scale, or quay, for Europeans. We were hailed by a Turkish officer of the customs, and immediately dismissed. We reached our bark and weighed anchor.

B

Our vessel carried two triangular sails, each on a very long yard, thick at bottom, tapering upwards, like a bull-rush, and fastened to the top of the mast, so as to be moveable every way, like a lever on a pole, such as is used for drawing water out of wells. In tacking, the big end, which is always the lower, with the rigging, is shifted over to the opposite side. The sharp end is very often high in the air apeak.

In the morning the inbat met us, and we put for shelter into a small creek on the right hand, near the mouth of the gulf. The boys climbing up the masts with bare feet and holding by two ropes, bestrode the yards, and gathered in the canvas, furling it quite to the extremities. A Venetian ship, which had sailed from Smyrna some days before, and was lying at anchor within the bay, afforded us an instance of the slow progress, and consequently tedious voyages, for which that flag is noted, and ridiculed in the Levant.

Between the mountains near us, by the sea side, was a small green valley, in which were scattered a few mean houses. There the vintage was now begun; the black grapes being spread on the ground in beds, exposed to the sun to dry for raisins; while in another part, the juice was expressed for wine, a man, with feet and legs bare, treading the fruit in a kind of cistern, with a hole or vent near the bottom, and a vessel beneath it to receive the liquor.

When morning approached, the land-breeze re-commenced. The boys mounted the yards, and, as they descended, untied the knots of the sails very expeditiously. Our captain knew every island, rock and cape; steering from promontory to promontory. One of the sailors, his brother, fell overboard; but swimming he was soon taken up. We came between Lesbos and Chios, passed by the north end of the latter, and,

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