Thomas Moore - Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.)
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Thomas Moore >> Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.)
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"We were very uneasy that the party did not arrive; but the secretary
assured me that the guides knew every part of the country, as did also
his own servant, who was with them, and that they had certainly taken
shelter in a village at an hour's distance. Not being satisfied with
the conjecture, I ordered fires to be lighted on the hill above the
village, and some muskets to be discharged: this was at eleven
o'clock, and the storm had not abated. I lay down in my great coat;
but all sleeping was out of the question, as any pauses in the tempest
were filled up by the barking of the dogs, and the shouting of the
shepherds in the neighbouring mountains.
"A little after midnight, a man, panting and pale, and drenched with
rain, rushed into the room, and, between crying and roaring, with a
profusion of action, communicated something to the secretary, of which
I understood only--that they had all fallen down. I learnt, however,
that no accident had happened, except the falling of the luggage
horses, and losing their way, and that they were now waiting for fresh
horses and guides. Ten were immediately sent to them, together with
several men with pine-torches; but it was not till two o'clock in the
morning that we heard they were approaching, and my friend, with the
priest and the servants, did not enter our hut before three.
"I now learnt from him that they had lost their way from the
commencement of the storm, when not above three miles from the
village; and that, after wandering up and down in total ignorance of
their position, they had, at last, stopped near some Turkish
tombstones and a torrent, which they saw by the flashes of lightning.
They had been thus exposed for nine hours; and the guides, so far from
assisting them, only augmented the confusion, by running away, after
being threatened with death by George the dragoman, who, in an agony
of rage and fear, and without giving any warning, fired off both his
pistols, and drew from the English servant an involuntary scream of
horror, for he fancied they were beset by robbers.
"I had not, as you have seen, witnessed the distressing part of this
adventure myself; but from the lively picture drawn of it by my
friend, and from the exaggerated descriptions of George, I fancied
myself a good judge of the whole situation, and should consider this
to have been one of the most considerable of the few adventures that
befell either of us during our tour in Turkey. It was long before we
ceased to talk of the thunder-storm in the plain of Zitza."]
[Footnote 131: Mr. Hobhouse. I think, makes the number of this guard
but thirty-seven, and Lord Byron, in a subsequent letter, rates them
at forty.]
[Footnote 132:
"Oh, thou Parnassus! whom I now survey,
Not in the frenzy of a dreamer's eye,
Not in the fabled landscape of a lay,
But soaring snow-clad through thy native sky,
In the wild pomp of mountain majesty!"
CHILDE HAROLD, Canto I.
]
[Footnote 133: The passage of Harris, indeed, contains the pith of the
whole stanza:--"Notwithstanding the various fortune of Athens, as a
city, Attica is still famous for olives, and Mount Hymettus for honey.
Human institutions perish, but Nature is permanent."--_Philolog.
Inquiries_.--I recollect having once pointed out this coincidence to
Lord Byron, but he assured me that he had never even seen this work of
Harris.]
[Footnote 134: Travels in Italy, Greece, &c., by H. W. Williams, Esq.]
[Footnote 135: The Miscellany, to which I have more than once
referred.]
[Footnote 136: He has adopted this name in his description of the
Seraglio in Don Juan, Canto VI. It was, if I recollect right, in
making love to one of these girls that he had recourse to an act of
courtship often practised in that country,--namely, giving himself a
wound across the breast with his dagger. The young Athenian, by his
own account, looked on very coolly during the operation, considering
it a fit tribute to her beauty, but in no degree moved to gratitude.]
[Footnote 137: Among others, he mentions his passage of the Tagus in
1809, which is thus described by Mr. Hobhouse:--"My companion had
before made a more perilous, but less celebrated, passage; for I
recollect that, when we were in Portugal, he swam from old Lisbon to
Belem Castle, and having to contend with a tide and counter current,
the wind blowing freshly, was but little less than two hours in
crossing the river." In swimming from Sestos to Abydos, he was one
hour and ten minutes in the water.
In the year 1808, he had been nearly drowned, while swimming at
Brighton with Mr. L. Stanhope. His friend Mr. Hobhouse, and other
bystanders, sent in some boatmen, with ropes tied round them, who at
last succeeded in dragging Lord Byron and Mr. Stanhope from the surf
and thus saved their lives.]
[Footnote 138: Alluding to his having swum across the Thames with Mr.
H. Drury, after the Montem, to see how many times they could perform
the passage backwards and forwards without touching land. In this
trial (which took place at night, after supper, when both were heated
with drinking,) Lord Byron was the conqueror.]
[Footnote 139: New Monthly Magazine.]
[Footnote 140: In a note upon the Advertisement prefixed to his Siege
of Corinth, he says,--"I visited all three (Tripolitza, Napoli, and
Argos,) in 1810-11, and in the course of journeying through the
country, from my first arrival in 1809, crossed the Isthmus eight
times in my way from Attica to the Morea, over the mountains, or in
the other direction, when passing from the Gulf of Athens to that of
Lepanto."]
[Footnote 141: Given afterwards to Sir Walter Scott.]
[Footnote 142: At present in the possession of Mr. Murray.]
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