At length, about two o’clock in the night, after a sail of sixteen hours, we landed on Anaphi. Not, alas! near the one town, but on the north side of the island, two hours away. Not till then did we realise the benefit of those churches, which are dotted everywhere over the islands for benighted wayfarers like ourselves. Our only chance of a little rest lay in entering one of them. It was, of course, only twelve feet by eight; it had a mud floor and no seats; we had to be content with stones for pillows and our rugs for bedclothes, but it was a warm and lovely night, so we were content.

Early next morning we arose, and despatched our manservant, who was a native of this island, to the town to get us mules, and we were left to puzzle our brains as to how to get any breakfast, for the long day in the boat had exhausted our provisions. We got together some brushwood and lighted a fire, in the embers of which we cooked some bacon, which we ate with hard bread and washed down with water; but, as they say in Greece, ‘hunger has no eyes, and if it had it would not use them.’

An uninteresting ride of two hours across a hilly, brown, and apparently barren country brought us to the Chora. On the side along which we passed we had no difficulty in deciding that Anaphi was barren even for one of the Cyclades; and Tournefort's naïve remark when he visited it in 1700 will apply still, that it has not wood enough to cook the partridges which abound. In red-legged partridges Anaphi certainly does abound. Coveys of partridges and lots of wild pigeons we stirred up at every turn. A story is current that a brace of partridges was brought over from Astypalaea to Anaphi, and became so prolific that the bird has become a plague. This popular story coincides curiously with an account Athanasius gives us of the quantities of partridges in Anaphi, where he said that the inhabitants were in danger of having to quit the island from their abundance. It is just possible that the stories are identical, and that it has survived for centuries.

There are no serpents in Anaphi, only green lizards. It is curious in almost every island the reptiles are different. In Siphnos they have very poisonous snakes; in Keos they have scorpions; in Antiparos they have only little adders; whereas on the adjoining Paros they have very huge and poisonous snakes. Anaphi is blessed in this respect, if not in trees and verdure.

The town, as usual, crowns a conical hill, and on the vantage ground afforded by two windmills we saw, when fully a mile away, all the population of the place straining their eyes to get a glimpse at the strange foreigners who had come to visit their shores. This was not to be wondered at, for in winter time the Anaphiotes must be very dull, for at Santorin they had taken the opportunity to give us the post for Anaphi, a small packet of a dozen letters, nearly all of which were from the Government to the demarch, and it was the first post they had had for two months.

‘Often we have no communication with the outer world for three months in winter time,’ replied the demarch in answer to my expressions of surprise; ‘for Anaphi has no harbour whatsoever, and the small cleft where the fishermen draw up their boats is exposed to the full fury of a southern gale. Those who come here are often obliged to stay longer than they expect,’ he concluded with a hospitable ring in his voice. We smiled in return, but felt apprehensive all the same, for we did not wish our stay here to be too protracted.

The great name in the island is Chalaris. The demarch’s name is Chalaris, and to him we were introduced as soon as we had taken possession of an empty house which was placed at our disposal during our stay by the brother of our servant. Shortly afterwards another Chalaris was brought in, a deaf, shrivelled-up old man of ninety, who had assisted Ross to dig in 1836, and was prepared to tell us of all the antiquities in the place. No sooner was he deposited on the sofa than he asked,‘What men are these?’ ‘English,’ was the reply (’Angloi ^gr). ‘Wild men (ágroi ^gr)?’ said he with surprise. ‘No, I will never believe that they are wild men;’ whereat there was a great laugh at our expense, and we soon became very friendly. We liked the Anaphiotes extremely; they were so cheery and simple, and, furthermore, a strikingly handsome set of people. There was the old grandmother dressed in black, her head almost buried in a black handkerchief, who sat neglected, and like a bundle of rugs, in a corner; then there was a portly lady, wife to our host, who was absent, and her beautiful daughter Eutimia, whose dark hair, pencilled eyebrows, classic profile, and rich complexion made her a picture even in her working clothes; but when that evening, at our request, she donned one of the old Anaphiote costumes her appearance was magnificent: it consisted of a violet silk brocade skirt, green velvet bodice, gold embroidered stomacher, and a short pink satin jacket, edged round the cuffs and down the front with pink fur. The headdress somewhat resembled the pina of Siphnos, but is here called ‘the circle’ (o kýklos ^gr): it consists of a tall wedge of cotton inside, over which Oriental handkerchiefs are gracefully arranged, so that the ends hang down over the shoulders. During the last few years this style of dress has been entirely abandoned; those who wore it were laughed at; and Eutimia that evening came in for a good share of ridicule, but I think a consciousness of our approval more than made up for this.

As it is at present, the dress of the women of Anaphi is more than usually sombre. After the death of a near relative they wear black for an immense time: girls after the loss of a parent do not go out of mourning till they are married; widows and elderly people never dream of removing their black. Knitting seems to be their great industry; they sit at their doors knitting and gossiping hard, with their thread fastened round a button sewn to their dress at the shoulder for this purpose.

After a rest and a repast, at which partridges formed a prominent feature, we issued forth, accompanied by the two Chalaris, to take stock of Anaphi. Chalaris the elder insisted on our first visiting his house, which consists of one room, and is furnished with a bed, sofa, chair, table, and endless archaeological trophies scattered around. With pride he pointed out the various objects he had collected — the torso of a statue let in over his door, an inscription let into his well before the house — and finally he pointed to a large slab of polished marble leaning against the wall.

‘That is to be my tombstone,’ said the old man with pride. ‘I have just got it, and I am going to begin at once to carve the inscription on it.’

‘He is very proud of himself,’ put in his kinsman, the demarch, in a low voice. ‘He is determined not to be buried in a cemetery amongst us, with just a stick to mark the place; he has chosen his own tomb, and, depend upon it, he will carve something extravagantly laudatory on that slab.’

‘I am not dead yet,’ put in the old man rather testily, for he did not like his kinsman’s cynical face and subdued voice; ‘and, if you like, I will take you to see the ruins to-morrow,’ he said, turning towards us; but knowing this to be impossible, for the old man was already worn out by the excitement of our company, we thanked him and bade him adieu, and continued our walk with the demarch.

‘Anaphi is one of the healthiest of the Cyclades,’ remarked our friend with pride; ‘it is by no means rare for people to reach a great age, and we have no doctor in the place.’

‘Then what do you do when ill?’ I enquired.

‘Oh! we understand a little about medicines ourselves. I keep a few drugs, which I dispense at the demarcheion ^dnote; but our remedies are chiefly the herbs which grow on our mountains.’

Certainly the lot of the thousand Anaphiotes is an enviable one. No steamer, rarely any letters, splendid air, no doctors. No wonder they live to ninety! The town, too, is exceptionally clean for an island one; the houses have all vaulted roofs, like those of Santorin, and consist for the most part of only one long narrow room, a door into the street, a window on each side of the door, and one above. They are whitewashed within and without, and each house has its round vaulted stove, about five yards from the house, where all the things that cannot be cooked are taken on a small brazier. The chief cooking utensil of an Anaphiote cottage is a long pole, at the end of which is attached an oval board, on which they place anything they wish to cook, to shove it into the oven: this pole is called Lazarus, and the answer to a quaint Anaphiote riddle, ‘Long, long as Lazarus with a cake on his head,’ is this pole. For a long time the reason for this simile baffled me, but at last I discovered that the popular idea of Lazarus when he was raised from the dead is that he was an abnormally tall, thin man with a round, flat head.

Anaphi is celebrated for good bread, and when they have a baking they do it with a vengeance, for they bake 100 to 150 okes ^dnote for one family at a time, and what they cannot eat fresh they dry, and call biscuit, which it is necessary to soak in water or coffee before eating. A good deal of this hard bread they send out of the island.

Everything is done at home at Anaphi; their windmills grind their corn, their fields produce a sufficiency of grain, their looms make all the materials for their clothes, their hill slopes produce excellent grapes. ‘If the rest of the world was to disappear,’ said the demarch, ‘and Anaphi alone be left, the only thing we should miss would be tobacco;’ and relative to the subject of tobacco I asked him if he approved of the new tax the Greek Government had recently put on cigarette papers.

‘Bah !’ exclaimed he with a wink, ‘the tax has not yet reached Anaphi;’ and the chief functionary of the law chuckled to himself as he rolled a cigarette in smuggled paper. ‘I suppose,’ continued I to change the subject, ‘that the war of independence and the liberties of Greece did not affect you much?’

‘We are Greeks,’ he said indignantly, ‘and we sent our two caïques full of men to take part in the war.’

On the top of the conical hill is a mediaeval citadel. William Crispi, brother of James XII., Duke of Naxos, got Anaphi as an appanage, and here he built the castle which we now saw. Eventually his elder brother died, and he in his turn became duke of Naxos, and left his daughter Florence as lady of Anaphi. After her death the Turks seized it, and under the Turks the Anaphiotes had a very easy time of it. In 1700 they paid a fine of 500 crowns for all their rights, and after that no Turk ever came near them, for their annual tribute was collected by a native epitropos ^dnote, who once a year betook himself to Cape Drio, on Paros, when he handed it over to the Kapitan Pasha; if this tribute was paid regularly the islanders had no cause to fear a visit from the Turks.

Catherine II. of Russia was the first to break the peace of these outlying islands in 1770 by inciting them to rebel. An old tradition existing in Greece, that the Turks would be destroyed by a fair race, favoured her scheme, and, of course, the bond of religion was a great one, and for nearly five years, under Prince Orloff, the Russians ruled in the Cyclades.

Next morning, accompanied by Demarch Chalaris, we set off on mules to visit the old Hellenic town of Anaphi. It was a threatening morning, and showery at first, and Chalaris the younger did not seem at all inclined to start; however we assured him that we often went out in the rain in England, so he laughed at us, and referred to his kinsman's mistake about wild men, and finally consented to be one for once in his life. On our way a glorious rainbow appeared before us, and the demarch told us how the peasants of Anaphi know how to foretell the crops by the colours of the rainbow. If red prevails in it the crop of grapes will be abundant; if green, that of the olive; if yellow, that of corn. ‘A rainbow in the morning,’ he added, ‘denotes luck; in the evening, woe;’ so we felt to-day that the omen was in our favour.

‘The nun’s girdle’ as they call the rainbow in these parts, strongly recalls the ancient myth about the virgin goddess Iris, and the idea that God sends it to show where a treasure is buried reminds one of the belief that Iris was Jove's messenger from heaven to earth.

It hailed pretty sharply now and again, or, as they will persist in saying, ‘it snowed.’ Everything, including even cold rain, is called snow in these islands. ‘White as an egg it was, round as a peppercorn, but by St. George it was neither of them,’ is an Anaphiote riddle, to which the answer is, not hail, but snow.

The old town of Anaphi had a very commanding position, and from the remains we saw it appears to have once been a very strong rich city, amongst the finest in the Cyclades. On the summit of the ancient acropolis are the remains of a temple. Some portions of the cella are still to be seen. From an inscription which was found on a votive statue we learn that there was once here another temple to Pythian Apollo combined with Artemis Soteira. All around are colossal walls, the foundations of houses, cisterns, and quantities of headless statues. On the slope of the hill between the town and the harbour was the necropolis of ancient Anaphi, which has contributed rich 'finds' to excavators — gold earrings, bracelets, precious stones, and things betokening a rich community. Close to a little church we came across two lovely marble sarcophagi; on one of these was a beautifully executed representation of children bringing sacrifices to Bacchus, one of whom is in a well-portrayed state of intoxication, as he places something on the altar; on the other side are Bellerophon and Pegasus; and on the two narrow sides Sphinxes, The other sarcophagus, which appears to have been even richer in execution, is smashed up and built into walls.

An old woman who was looking after her crops here gave us a fig, curiously moulded in a sort of clay, which she had found in one of these tombs; and we saw two round balls, of the same material, with inscriptions on them, which had likewise been found in tombs.

We then made our way down to the shore, where was the ancient port, and where we saw traces of houses, a mole, and steps going down into the sea. This spot still bears an old name (Katályma ^gr), called so probably from the fact of its containing inns or halting places for travellers: it is an exceedingly rare classical word, and entirely unknown in modern Greek. Here, too, is a limekiln, the invariable destroyer of marble remains. Let us hope that this barbarous custom of converting marble friezes and statues into lime will soon be heard of no more in Greece.

Down by the shore, with a deliciously warm sun to dry the effects of our early morning wetting, we sat down to our midday repast, Demarch Chalaris waxed gay and talkative as he quaffed the good wine of his island; and he pressed us to eat an abominable black and green sausage of bacon and garlic, and seemed disappointed at our refusal; so he pulled a long face by way of revenge at some chocolate we gave him, called it horrid stuff, and said he would keep it till he got home to make coffee of, as it was raw.

On our way home we passed through some of the demarch's own fields, where they were busy ploughing. A plough in these parts is an exceedingly primitive article, somewhat similar to those which Homer would have seen if he had not been blind. The chief ingredient in a plough, and a rarity in Anaphi, is a tree with a trunk and two branches; one branch serves as a tail and the other has a bit of iron fixed to it, and penetrates the ground; the trunk is the pole. Sometimes there are slight improvements on this, but not often. The beauty of this plough is that it is so light that the farmer can carry it over his shoulders as he drives his bullocks before him; they never care about making deep furrows, and they never make straight ones. Often the farmer begins by ploughing out a circle for his morning's work; this he goes round and round and across in a careless manner until his task is over.

We kept along by the shore on our way home, and the demarch told us much about the great quantity of sea demons (thalassamáchiai ^gr) that they have at Anaphi.

From his description we gathered that they were a species of Nereid of the sea who are for ever fighting with the Nereids of the land. One day a shipowner who put into Anaphi with a cargo of cotton went up to the town to see about his affairs, and in returning to the port he there encountered a demon, ten times bigger than himself, which chased him down the hill and then disappeared in the waves. Such stories remind one of the adventures of Ulysses. Another species of hobgoblin occurs in Anaphi, bearing the ancient name and attributes: they are the Lamiae, evil-working women who live in desert places, ill-formed like their ancestors, daughters of Belus and Sibyl. Utterly unfit are they for household duties, for they cannot sweep; so an untidy woman to-day is said to have made the sweepings of a Lamia (tis Lamías ta sarómata ^gr); they cannot bake — a great offence, indeed, in Anaphi — for they put bread into the oven before heating it; they have dogs and mules, but give bones to their mules and straw to their dogs. They are very gluttonous, so that in Byzantine and modern Greek the verb lamióno ^gr is used to express over-eating. They have a special predilection for baby's flesh, and a Greek mother of to-day will frighten her child by saying that a Lamia will come if it is naughty, just as was said to naughty children in ancient days; for the legend used to run that Zeus loved Lamia too well, untidy though she was, and Hera out of jealousy killed her children; whereat Lamia was so grieved that she took to eating the children of others.

Some Lamiae are like Sirens, and by taking the form of lovely nymphs beguile men to their destruction; for example, an ecclesiastical legend, savouring strongly of Boccaccio, tells us how a Lamia charmed a monk as he sat by the side of a lake one evening. Dawn came, and the monk was seen no more; but some children swore to having seen his hoary beard floating in the waters of the lake.

That evening after our dinner Eutimia and her mother determined that we should see all that was best of Anaphiote society, and invited their friends and acquaintances to a ball: this was very pleasing to us, as now we knew we should see the manners and customs of their private life to perfection. Dancing is a passion amongst them, and one can easily imagine their love for it when one thinks how shut off they are from all the pleasures of the outer world. As for the syrtos, they dance it admirably and in a most pathetic manner: the leader bends on his knee in prayer to his adored one, he stretches out his hands to heaven to supplicate the intervention of divine power on his behalf. Dancing, in short, as in ancient times, is considered as a means by which to express feeling by the evolution of hands and legs. The social dance, as we know it in Western Europe, is unknown.

They have several local dances in Anaphi; the sýsta ^gr, danced only by men, is curious: they stand, as in the syrtos, in a semicircle, with their hands on each other's shoulders, and then they begin to move slowly backwards and forwards, quickening their steps as they go, until they end in an exceedingly rapid motion. Demarch Chalaris joined in this, with the result that, being no longer young, he got much exhausted, and excused himself for the rest of the evening by saying that he had too young a heart in too old a body.

Another pretty dance is the moloritis; Eutimia and another girl danced it with two men: first they danced hand in hand, like the lady's chain in a quadrille, then they danced separately, the women, of course, demurely, whilst the men performed acrobatic feats, as in the syrtos; and they sang little ballads (madináda ^gr) as they danced.

After a while a rough, coarse-looking shepherd came in, and his advent was greeted with great joy, for he was reckoned the best singer in Anaphi. Poor man! he was very shy, and they had to ply him with constant bumpers, for ‘Andronico never can sing till he is drunk,’ they said, quite as a matter of course. At last Andronico gathered himself together for a song, and a boy played a goatskin sabouna — that wretched Grecian substitute for the bagpipe — by way of accompaniment. When thoroughly prepared to begin Andronico shut his eyes with determination and threw back his head, shaking as he did so his long, shaggy, unkempt locks and his whole body. Then he opened his mouth wide, and thereout proceeded the most melancholy, deep-noted, timeless utterances that ever could be called a song.

The words of this song Eutimia kindly copied for me next morning, and as they struck me as a production of a curious nature I will append a literal translation:—

Andronico's song was covered with applause, and more wine was administered, which resulted in his consenting to dance in a musical syrtos, of which he was to take the lead. First, he cast off his shoes, by way of preparation; such shoes as peasants in Anaphi wear, being made of thick pig's skin, with the bristles left on: they are excellent for climbing rocks and keeping out the wet, but not for dancing: and now he sang more wildly than before and danced more vigorously than anyone else. The verses of the song he sang were answered by the young man who danced at the other end of the wavy line. But as the dance went on Andronico forgot to sing; he got wilder and wilder in his evolutions, until at length his movements were scarcely creditable, and he was conducted home.

‘Andronico,’ said Eutimia smiling, ‘never can do anything till he is drunk.’

The following day was devoted to a visit to the monastery of Kalamiotissa, built out of what is left of the old temple of Apollo Aeglites. The demarch accompanied us as before, but this time we went by boat, for the distance on muleback would be weary. One of our men took some dynamite with him, and though the representative of the law in Anaphi was with us he winked at the boatmen fishing in this forbidden manner, and I thought again of the cigarette papers.

The legend in olden times ran that Apollo raised up an island out of the sea to succour the heroes on their return from Colchis in search of the golden fleece; and this island was Anaphi. In return for this benefit a gorgeous temple was built to Apollo Aeglites on a narrow tongue of land which unites the mainland of Anaphi to a gigantic mountain rock which stands boldly out into the sea, now called Mount Kalamos. All the way from the old town to the temple, some two miles distant, can be seen traces of the old sacred way, the pavement of which is left in parts, and is worn with chariot wheels; and on either side of the way are frequent tombs, as on the road between Athens and Eleusis.

Three monks only now live at the monastery of Kalamiotissa, the only one in Anaphi; and the day before our visit the superior had died, and they had had splendid lamentations over his body, at which we regretted not to have been present. The monastery now belongs to one in Santorin, and is built on the gigantic foundation walls which supported the temple of Apollo, one stone of which I measured, and found it to be two yards twenty-eight inches long by two and a half feet high: these stones are of a coarse sort of marble which is found close by.

The pronaos of the temple is standing as it was, and is now used by the monks as a store, where they keep their grain and instruments of husbandry; the peribolos of the temple is worked into the present church and other cloister buildings; and the cella is the present refectory. In every direction are to be seen inscriptions let into the walls. There are two platforms, which apparently seem to have been used for buildings, and all round are traces of foundations; and it would appear from the inscriptions that this ground was once covered with temples, the principal one being dedicated to Apollo Aeglites, another to Aphrodite, another to Aesculapius, &c.

Before returning to our boat we were taken to see an inscription in a ruined house which gave a catalogue of the consuls to the deme of Anaphi in letters of Attic type. There are enumerated on this stone seven consuls from different parts of Greece resident at Anaphi — one from Thessaly, others from Mykonos, Cnidos, Paros, Chios, Lacedaemon, and Siphnos — which fact points to the importance of Anaphi at that period.

The monks of Kalamiotissa received us well, and offered us the best of their cellar and larder; but they were depressed, poor men, at the recent loss of their superior; so we burdened them with as little of our company as possible, and returned to the town as soon as our investigations were concluded.

We had intended to spend a few more days at Anaphi; our quarters were comfortable, our friends genial and quaint; but on the following morning there was a breeze, which promised to carry us quickly back to Santorin; so, deeming it prudent to secure a passage whilst we could, we bid a reluctant farewell to the Anaphiotes. Eutimia and several others accompanied us to our boat, and in four hours we were once more under lee of Thera ^dnote.