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our furniture, which had been borrowed, and gave the remainder to our friends and domestics.

The twenty-first of June was the day fixed for our removal. Among other civilities at parting, I was presented with a very fine pomegranate, accompanied with a wish, that I might reach home, as sound in body and as full of knowledge. We set out in the evening for the Piræus, attended by Isofime, and a tall Greek named Coletti, who had been in England, and was our neighbour; forming, as usual, a long and motley cavalcade. A crowd assembled about our gate, followed us with wishes of a prosperous voyage and speedy return, believing, as they had been told by Lombardi, that we intended to pass the winter at Athens. We were joined on the road by Osman, Tyralee Agá, a Turk, who had frequently visited us. The harvest was then far advanced; the sheaves of corn lying collected in the open air, by the floors; or horses running in a ring, three or four abreast round a pole, to tread out the grain. We repaired to the chamber of the custom house, in which we had tarried on our first arrival in the port, and supped sitting cross-legged on a carpet. The archon had provided agourd of choice wine, and one of our crew excelled on the lyre. It was late at night, when our friends rose, and bidding us adieu gallopped away toward Athens.

Early in the morning we embarked, with two live lambs, George Vandoro, a Greek of Patræ, our cook, Michaeli, a youth of Athens and his brother Constantine, our Swiss, a janizary, and Lombardi, who had resolved to accompany us to the borders of Turkey; besides an adventurer of Corfu, whom we indulged with his passage homeward. This wanderer was a man of a decent and plausible carriage. He had been distressed for money, and imprisoned at Athens, and

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owed his enlargement to our compassion, which he repaid with dishonesty and deceit. We rowed by a French vessel, which was waiting in the Piræus to lade with corn; leaving an Albanian youth named Sideri, who had lived with us, crying on the shore.

The wind being southerly, when we got out of the Piræus, we put into a small creek of the peninsula on our left, which was once encircled with a wall of excellent masonry, as appears from the remains, belonging to the fortress of Munychia. By the sea-side is a large fragment of a marble column. The rock was incrusted with salt, white and pure, formerly an article of commerce, and with the wood, rented of the public. Our men made a tent of the sail and oars to shelter us from the sun, and collected the low shrubs and arid herbage to dress our provisions.

We waited for a wind until the following day, when we sailed, three hours after noon, steering toward the west end of Ægina. We were becalmed about mid-way, and rowed by a rock or islet, which the mariners say is haunted; murmurings and frightful voices being heard on it, perhaps the beating of the waves, and the cry of amphibious animals, such as the phocæ, or sea-calves, which occasionally repair to land; and nightly goblins ill-treating those who are forced to tarry in bad weather,

We went on shore on an islet, between Ægina and Salamis, where we found plenty of sea-chesnuts. The rock was bare, except a few shrubs and stunted trees, but abounded in locusts continually rising, as we moved through the parched herbage, and settling again after a short flight. The amazing swarms of these insects, seen in countries not commonly infested with them, it is likely, are formed when provisions

are scanty at home; hunger forcing them to assemble to be wafted by the wind to regions of a moister temperature, where vegetables continue to flourish. Among the bushes I discovered an insect of a species less common, resembling the tendril of a vine. It was moving, the colour a lively green. Naturalists have named it The walking stick.* This, and almost every rock, has on it a ruinous church. The sun, which was now setting behind the picturesque islands and mountains, coloured heaven and earth with a rich variety of exquisite tints. Our crew rested after their labour in the boat, made fast to the shore, on which we lay among cedartrees, and thickets of mastic. In the night a great dew fell.

Early in the morning we had a favourable breeze, of short duration. We had purposed to examine again the site of Ægina, but on opening the port saw in it a large saité, or vessel at anchor. A Barbary cruiser had lately appeared off Sunium. Several in the boat were seized with panic fear, and called out to the captain to steer to the shore, which was at a little distance. We determined, however, to row on, when the hanging out of a piece of linen to dry spread new terror, some insisting it was a signal for us to go on board. We passed a rock, named Móne, and putting into a bay of Ægina, called Perthica, dined by a well of cold water, under a thick and wide-spreading fig-tree, beneath which we would have slept at noon, but our mariners affirmed, the shade was bad, that we should rise heavy and with the head ache. Our water casks were carried to be filled at a better spring, near a mile distant, by a metochi or farm, where we procured green almonds, and were informed that the vessel, which had caused

* See Edwards, pl. 288, c. 78, part 2d.

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