A STRING of island rocks almost joins Sikinos to Pholygandros — fantastic barren rocks, which sparkle in the sunshine, and of which we got to know every form and shape during that long day of patient tacking, accomplishing our sail of twelve miles in the same number of hours. Of all the islands of the Aegean Sea Pholygandros can boast of the most majestic coastline; in fact, I doubt if it can be equalled anywhere. A precipitous line of rocks, in places rising 1,160 feet above the sea, forms the north-eastern bulwark; as we approached it the sun had set, and the sky was lurid with that red strange light which astonished the world, and particularly the superstitious Greek world, in the winter of 1883-4. The water was almost transparent, and its depths looked wonderfully mysterious as we glided in amongst the rocks, some of which were white and looked like Nereids come to drive us from an enchanted shore. Such scenes as this make one realise how easy it has been to imagine the phantasies of the ‘Odyssey’ and of modern folklore.

When we saw the spot again by daylight we wondered exceedingly how we had been able to climb up on hands and knees; it is known as the Plaka, a flat rock which slopes down into the sea at an angle of fifty degrees, and which is slippery in winter with running water; after scaling which we had a tremendous scramble in the dark up to the town, which is built on the edge of the cliff, 750 feet above us; and the path in winter up this side of the island is little better than a waterfall.

On reaching habitations we inquired where the demarch lived. ‘Outside,’ was the stoical reply. ‘Outside what?’ we asked. ‘Not Inside,’ was the angry rejoinder; and no further information could we get out of the man. We pursued our way in search of a more intelligent informant, until at length we discovered that Pholygandros boasts of only one town, which is walled, and called ‘Inside’ (mesa ^gr), and of a colony outside this wall, of better-class houses, which is called ‘Outside’ (ekso ^gr); and a Pholygandriote knows of no other names but these.

Our new host was a very different man from our last. He was horribly modern in all his ideas; seventeen years ago he had travelled and gone as far as Paris, and since then he had lived with but one object — namely, that of modernising his island and rooting out superstitions. He had been in office as demarch for ten years, and boasted greatly of his improvements: how he had made a good road from the town down to the southern harbour, where we should have landed if the wind had been favourable; how he had encouraged education and new ideas in agriculture: and concluded by saying, ‘You will find our island a little Paris after Sikinos.’

No one can realise the power a demarch possesses in these far-off islands in the Aegean Sea, especially in one like Pholygandros, where the steamer does not touch, and where sometimes in winter they are weeks without a post. He is a sort of king, or rather president of a small republic, elected every three years; and at these elections party spirit is most fearfully strained; for every Greek is a politician, and talks politics at his café, at his social gatherings, and everywhere, just as his forefathers did before him.

The Pholygandriotes do not care one jot about the Government at Athens; they have two joint members with Melos and Kimolos and three other islands; but they do not care a bit about their election — it is into the election of a demarch that they throw all their interest. For Athens, a king, and a parliament seem such miles away to them, it does not matter much what they do; the demarch is elected by them, and is theirs alone, and in his rise or fall all the local interest centres.

Of course there are two parties in Pholygandros: one is an aristocratic party, headed by one Venier, of an old Venetian family, and seconded by Themistocles Mavrojenes, one of the great Pariote family, who once could boast of a hospodar of Wallachia as one of their members; and then there is the democratic party, headed by our new host the demarch, which just now is in the ascendant. At the last election they had a furious contest; blood had not been spilt or murders committed, as was the case at Siphnos on a similar occasion, but party spirit ran so high, and still continues so, that Dr. Venier and the democratic demarch are not yet on speaking terms. One day, during our stay, our hostess came, in grief, to ask our advice about her father, who was very ill and at the point of death, she feared, so that the day before they had given him the ‘prayer oil’ (euchélaion ^gr); but still he refused to have Dr. Venier called in — his hated political rival. ‘He would rather die,’ she said, ‘unattended by a physician than have that man in his house.’ It was evident that nothing could be done for the old man, whose days were numbered; so we tried to change the subject from the hated Venier, as the name seemed to raise our hostess’ ire exceedingly and tried to console her about her father, and to find out about their customs in Pholygandros at funerals. ‘Well,’ said she, ‘we shall be busy when the old man passes away. No one is more respected than he, and such a lot of people would have to be invited to the “grief table”’; whereupon she was asked to explain what this meant. It appears that in this island when a death has occurred; cooking is not deemed correct in the house for two or three days, so the relatives and friends bring food — ‘bitter food’ (pikrophágia ^gr), as they call it — and spread a ‘grief table’ in the house of mourning. They hang the rooms with black, and remove the inevitable crochet from the sofas for a season. I felt an inward desire that, if the old man must die soon, he might die whilst we were there, that we might hear the lamentations and see the customs; but he did not die, and again we were told to put off our funeral enquiries till we got to Mykonos.

The prayer oil was administered to the old man, as we had been told; so I asked our hostess to explain the ceremony. ‘Here in Pholygandros we generally have five priests to perform the ceremony: a table is set in the sick man’s room, on which is placed a dish of wheat, and a vessel on the wheat, into which the oil is poured; five pieces of stick with cotton tied round them are stuck into the wheat; the gospel is laid on this, and the five priests stand round with their chasubles (phoinólion ^gr) on, and sing tropaea, and read the suitable portions of Scripture whilst the censer is waved in the room. At the end of all this the chief priest dips a twig into the oil and makes a sign of the cross on the sick man, who kisses at the same time the proferred Bible, and then is left to die in the odour of sanctity.’

Here again is the wheat (kólliva ^gr) in connection with death, and in this place I must relate another ceremony I saw at Aigiale, in the island of Amorgos, which bears on the same subject. It was on the All Saints’ Day of the Greek Church, and every householder of Aigiale sent to the church a plate of boiled corn, generally carried by an old woman with the top-heavy troulos costume of that island. She then poured the corn into a basket placed before the high altar whilst the service was going on, and into this mass of boiled corn she stuck her lighted candle. Some of the richer inhabitants sent private plates, which were arranged in front of the tempelon and adorned with sesame seeds and elaborate patterns of almonds and raisins. After the service was over all repaired to the square in front of the church, where the chief priest sat on his throne, a stone bench with stone arms in front of the church, and the worthies of the place around him, whilst the baskets and plates f of boiled corn were distributed to all who could squeeze near enough to get any. Little children got handkerchiefs full of it, and rushed off to corners to devour their feast, and general hilarity prevailed ‘in memory of the departed.’ In other places this boiled wheat and a similar festival takes the place of a sort of harvest thanksgiving. Strange it is to see this connection between life and death represented in the old way, Demeter and her daughter symbolical always of ‘sown in corruption to rise in incorruption.’

The town of Pholygandros rejoices in a most glorious situation. ‘Inside,’ or the old fortified town, is built on the edge of the cliff, so that it only requires three walls to protect it; the fourth side looks straight down the yawning precipice, so that there is no excuse for dirt when offal can be thrown down 750 feet into the sea without any trouble; yet ‘Inside’ is a very dirty place indeed, one street being quite impassable from the mire of pigs. ‘Outside,’ on the contrary, is clean and well-paved, in every way prosperous, being the pride of its ruler, our host, the demarch. The ‘insiders’ represent the old aristocracy, who are slow to introduce the innovation of cleanliness.

There are lots of ovens in ‘Outside’; but they only bake one day a week in Pholygandros, and a busy, amusing sight it is. These ovens are heated first of all by shoving into them an enormous quantity of burning brushwood (kladiá ^gr).

Loaves of bread (kouloúria ^gr), the twisted cakes covered with sesame, pitta ^gr (pasties) are all arranged on long boards awaiting the moment when the oven is sufficiently heated, and the burning embers of the brushwood have been swept out. Everybody is busy and gay, rushing hither and thither with their boards covered with the weekly supply of bread: after seeing a bread-baking such as this one can well realise the point of a riddle popular in these parts:—

Q. A black-faced heifer which devours brushwood? A. An oven.

Towering above the town is a pointed cliff forming the summit of that wall of precipice which rises straight out of the sea. On the summit of this cliff is perched the remains of a castle, which once belonged to the dukes of Naxos, and all that is left of the old Hellenic town. This is 1,160 feet above the sea, but what one chiefly sees now are Roman remains, cisterns, and walls. Into the bell tower of a large church half-way up the hill, dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin, is let the torso of a Roman figure, and in the church, itself there are traces of old pillars. Part of the modern cemetery is bounded by an old Hellenic wall, just below this church; and a wretched cemetery it is, with only rough stones without an inscription to mark the graves. In a ruined church at the top of the cliff is an inscription of the date of Tiberius, and below, near the town, is an Hellenic one, two centuries B.C. A few remains here and there have been found, but all point to Pholygandros in ancient days having been a very insignificant place, far inferior to Sikinos, and very sparsely inhabited.

It was a most enchanting day that we chose for a visit to the golden grotto of Pholygandros. Out of politeness the demarch determined to go with us; he had never been inside it he said; and I feel convinced that our rebukes urged on this energetic but misguided man to undertake a task for which by reason of increasing years he was totally unfitted.

We rode down the demarch’s newly paved mule road to the southern harbour, and there beheld the maritime importance of Pholygandros as compared with Sikinos. They have four caïques belonging to them, and lots of fishing-boats, and the harbour, though small, shallow, and exposed to the south, is deserving of the name. A small colony of fishermen’s huts forms the port, and here we noticed a clever little contrivance which they fasten to their nets in rough weather so that they may know where to find them. A bell is hung from two bent reeds, which form a little dome built on some flat reeds, and around the bell hang stones which strike it when the sea is rough. Here, as elsewhere, we were struck by the universal use of the gourd for all domestic purposes. A gourd with a long handle they will put on the table for a decanter; small gourds cut in half serve as wine-glasses; gourds with handles are used by every fisherman for baling water out of his boat; they are used for floating nets, and likewise for sieves through which milk is passed: a hole is made at one end, and a piece of the equally useful brushwood is stuffed into it, then the milk passes through the brushwood and is strained. Gourds properly prepared are used almost exclusively for the carrying of wine on a journey, and replace bottles in a country where the wine is quite a secondary consideration; for you pay three pence for your bottle and perhaps a halfpenny for the wine that is in it.

We got into a small boat at the harbour, and were rowed all along the wonderful line of cliff to where the grotto is; a cliff which rises 1,160 feet straight out of the sea, without a break or a ledge to catch the eye, is by no means a common sight, and this cliff extends thus for fully two miles. The formation is limestone streaked with iron, and here and there a few tufts of green relieve the monotony, the whole contrasting wonderfully with the indigo colour of the sea under its widespread shadow. Arato, an old writer, tells us that Pholygandros was once called ‘Iron,’ and that its second name was taken from a son of Minoa, of Crete; it well deserves the name of Iron, for this wall of cliff is like a band of rusty iron coming out of the sea. We were rowed close up to the grotto, the entrance to which is about thirty feet above the sea, and thirty feet of apparently horizontal rock.

It was much easier to tell why it was called the golden grotto than to get into it, for the iron in the surrounding rock makes it look like a black picture set in a frame of gold; but our climb to it was fearful, and the energetic demarch won our infinite respect by ultimately accomplishing it. Anciently this grotto was approached by steps from above, which are now worn away; they led up to the old town on the cliff, and their existence was discovered in 1837 by Kyrios Latre; but now the only way of reaching the grotto from the land-side is by being let down by ropes for unpleasant distances.

Inside the grotto is curious and adorned with stalactites, like cathedral stalls, but nothing worthy of admiration after one has seen the grotto of Antiparos; inside, however, it has some ancient cisterns, which interested us, still full of water, and the haunt of countless pigeons. There are three of them — one round, one square, and one semicircular — and appearances point to its having been a place from whence the inhabitants in times of siege could get their water; also it appears to have been used as a cemetery, for rows of tombs have been found here and marble statuettes. We turned over the thin sandy soil with which the bottom is covered, and found quantities of ancient broken bits of pottery of a coarse description; and it struck me as a place that might repay a little excavation.

It was all very well to have climbed up — the descent was quite another thing. I would almost warrant that the demarch had never been so terrified in his life as he was then; our two sailors helped him down slowly by steadying his tottering steps and finding foothold for them. Beads of perspiration stood on his brow when he reached the boat, and if future travellers visit the golden grotto of Pholygandros I feel confident that he will not attempt to accompany them, but remain prudently in the boat below.

Pholygandros is an island of most extraordinary shape, and if we had not Arato’s authority for deriving its name from Minoa’s son we might be tempted to speculate that it had something to do with a polypus, for the h is only a modern innovation. From the central height of the island legs stretch out into the sea in every direction, and this central height divides Pholygandros into two parts, one of which is a perfect wilderness of stones and the other very fertile, possessing smiling valleys and mountain slopes cultivated up to the very summit.

Of course the highest mountain is called Mount Prophet Elias, and close to it is the summit of St. Eleutherios, with a little church dedicated to that saint at the top. When there is a drought all the Pholygandriotes with the priests and the sacred pictures of the Madonna walk in procession first to the top of Mount Prophet Elias, where they kneel around his shrine and pray for rain; after which they go and do likewise at the shrine of St. Eleutherios. ‘There is quite a little historical interest associated with our Church of St. Eleutherios,’ old Themistocles Mavrojenes said to me that evening. ‘Seventy years ago there lived a pirate who annoyed the Pholygandriotes excessively. They prayed and prayed to St. Eleutherios for his death, and vowed a church to the saint’s honour whenever that event should take place. The pirate, however, would not die, and for many years continued his depredations, until at last, at a ripe old age, he was gathered to his fathers; and our townspeople, who evidently think that no limitations can be brought to bear on the answering of a prayer, felt in duty bound to erect a church. It is a wretched little concern, however,’ concluded Mavrojenes apologetically; ‘if he had been more prompt in his succour St. Freedom would have had a better temple erected in his honour.’

The day before we left Pholygandros was a very gay one for us. Themistocles Mavrojenes, being a privileged person and decidedly shrewd, managed to keep in with both parties, and was the bearer of a message from the hostile camp. Dr. Venier presented his compliments to us and expressed his regret that, his relations with the demarch being so strained, he could not possibly give himself the pleasure of personally paying us his respects, but should be delighted to welcome us in his own house.

Dr. Venier lived in the ‘Inside,’ in an old-fashioned house, and from him we learnt the sad truth that under the present horrible régime all the delightful old customs and costumes were being abandoned. ‘Twenty years ago you could not have seen quainter customs than here in all the archipelago, and now even Sikinos beats us.’ But I replied, in the words of the demarch, ‘Pholygandros is a little Paris as compared to Sikinos,’ and I was sorry I did so, for the ground on which I was treading was treacherous; for the future I decided to leave Greek politics alone.

Only some of the richer inhabitants, and amongst them Dr. Venier, have kept their old dresses, ornaments, and lace; the poorer people have by this time sold all theirs, and Dr. Venier showed us some very lovely things. The ancient headdress seems to have been the same as that worn still in Siphnos and is also called the pina: besides this Dr. Venier had some exquisite gold and silver lace and lovely silk embroidery which should be in a museum. On King Otho’s visit to Pholygandros he was entertained by Dr. Venier’s father, when Dr. Venier was still a boy, but he remembered quite well that Queen Amalia had said that she had not slept all night for admiration of the lovely embroidery with which her bed was hung. Dr. Venier showed them to us, with pride, as articles which royalty had used. The curtains were made of striped silk gauze, with gold lace insertion; the pillow-cases were of red silk edged with gold lace; the sheets were edged with some of the same gold lace, only wider; and as for the coverlet, it was made of the richest brocades I ever saw. The valances and bed-tops were all hung with old Greek point, but then the room was a tiny, ill-lighted hole, which a servant in England would turn up her nose at. I do not wonder that Queen Amalia did not sleep.

After a pleasant afternoon spent in the company of the Veniers, we returned to our host’s house, and went into spiteful raptures over the beauty of Dr. Venier’s embroideries. It was in vain that the democratic demarch smiled and said that they cared for none of those things, his wife’s jealousy was thoroughly aroused and told a different tale. She went to her cupboard and produced all she could find of lace and embroidery; but, alas! her stock was very inferior to what we had seen.

This is always the way to see and hear anything in these islands. Tell everybody the beautiful things you have seen and heard in other islands, and you are sure to arrive at the best they have. Jealousy is wonderfully developed in these parts.

That evening old Themistocles Mavrojenes gave us an invitation to ‘a table’ at his house in the ‘Inside’; so when it was dark we sallied forth to our meal, with the aid of a lantern. The domestic who conducted us was not accustomed to dinner parties, and led us through the kitchen, to Mrs. Mavrojenes’ dismay, who was giving the finishing touch to her dishes of risoglio; our host was very angry with the man, and set to work to talk about his distinguished ancestor, the prince of Wallachia.

We did not fare at all badly, and for the first time in the islands did our hostess sit at the top of the table, in European fashion. We had soup, and the meat which had been boiled in it, served up with tomatoes. We had an excellent dish called Giaprakiá ^gr — meat chopped up with a little rice, onions and spices, and then wrapped up in vine leaves, which they keep in pickles for this purpose — over it was thrown a delicious sauce of egg and lemon.

Courses of cold fish (cuttle-fish, and red mullet) followed next, and then came the rice and milk pudding (risoglio), with an elaborately stencilled pattern of grated nutmeg on the top. These dishes and lots of little plates containing olives, capers, &c. were scattered about to adorn the table all the while. It was quite evident that Themistocles Mavrojenes knew how things should be done as behoved the descendant of so illustrious an ancestor.

Wine passed plentifully enough during dinner, but with dessert Greeks never drink wine, but crack their walnuts and munch their almonds with nothing to wash them down. Long before the meal was over guests began to troop in, and were very grateful for occasional handfuls of almonds, raisins, and nuts which our hostess passed to them from time to time; finally, we wound up the entertainment with a general smoke and cups of Turkish coffee.

Next morning we left Pholygandros, and were surprised to find our boat, which hitherto had had a white sail, now with a rich coloured one; the boatmen had found some red mud, in which they had dyed it their favourite colour. Certainly it looked very picturesque, and contrasted well with the green boat. Another surprise awaited us in the shape of an old woman and a big box; we expostulated a little, saying that we had hired the boat for ourselves; but they said there was so little opportunity for her to get away that she should be treated as ballast, and so forth; so we made no further objection. They shoved her and her box on board with little respect, put her into a dark and stinking hold with our servant, and fastened the lid down. We heard nothing more of her until we arrived at our destination, except terrible yells and groans when it became rough, for the Greek island women suffer more audibly from sea-sickness than any people I am acquainted with.

Our voyage was a very characteristic one in these islands. We planned to go to Antiparos, and we started with a favourable though slight breeze. This died away altogether before we got an hour on our way; the exceeding heat of the sun, and ominous clouds on the horizon, made our sailors anxious about the upshot. We said we would sail for Amorgos if possible, and started in that direction, for the breeze was freshening from the west. Before very long the breeze became too fresh, and our men insisted on running for Ios; but we found we could by no means go round the northern point of Sikinos, so we had to retrace our way almost back to the harbour of Pholygandros.

It soon began to blow with a vengeance; it was impossible to make for Ios. ‘Let us run for Santorin,’ we said, getting more and more disgusted at our fate. But no; hardly had we gone a mile than our captain said it would not be safe; we must put in to Sikinos, on the southern side. What horrors! were we again going to be storm-stayed at Sikinos? We thought of the demarch’s damp house and the cold and misery of the place. We saw, to our delight, the Sikinos caïque put off and make for Ios. ‘Surely,’ we said, ‘if that craft can go we can;’ but it put back again almost immediately, and our hearts sank within us.

In our despair we implored our captain to make an attempt to reach Ios, and, the weather having taken a favourable turn, he promised to try. Though much tossed about and drenched with the waves, we reached our haven in safety shortly after 10 o’clock, after a day’s bitter experience of the uncertainty of caïque-sailing. It is impossible to make any plans beforehand in the winter time; it is not where you will go, but where you can get, when amongst the islands where steamers do not touch.

Our good friends at Ios were delighted at our return, having had a prognostication of it, and entertained us hospitably till the steamer came to carry us away.