Photograp 

 THE SEA TOWER OF SIMOPETRA: MT. ATHOS, GREECE 



by H. G. Dwight 



The monaster}- to which this tower belongs is romantically situated on a crag a thousand 



feet above the iEeean 



zantine fresco. From the ceremony with 

 which this visit was invested and the 

 slowness with which the huge library key 

 turned in its wards, I seemed to gather 

 an impression only strengthened by sub- 

 sequent experiences. The librarian of 

 another monastery was also its repre- 

 sentative at Karyes, and he had to be 

 brought down from the capital by ex- 

 press mule before we could see his books. 



ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS BADLY 



HANDLED 



A third library was unlocked by three 

 several keys, whose holders had been 

 collected from as many points of the 

 compass. At a fourth monastery I asked 

 one of the presiding elders if they had 

 any illuminated manuscripts. He said 

 he did not know ; he had never been into 

 the library. And we felt an air of mis- 

 trust about us whenever we asked to see 

 books. Sometimes we were not allowed 

 to touch them ourselves. It was the 



more exasperating, because a dreadful 

 habit is almost universal on Mt. Athos 

 of turning rare vellum pages by pinching 

 them up between a licked, but not too 

 clean, thumb and forefinger. 



Yet we saw holes enough cut in pages 

 where illuminations had been to realize 

 that the monks are not suspicious with- 

 out reason. Xor have all collectors, I 

 fear, been so scrupulous to make return 

 for the spoil they have carried away as 

 that spirited and human traveler, the 

 Hon. Robert Curzon, Jr., who visited the 

 Sacred Mount in 1837, bought a ship- 

 load of precious manuscripts, and in his 

 "Visits to Monasteries in the Levant" 

 wrote an account of his adventures that 

 I, for one, infinitely prefer to "Eothen." 



A MYSTIFYING MAP OF MACEDONIA 



At Yatopethi they luckily refused to 

 sell him anything. The consequence is 

 that they have today a very rich collec- 

 tion of medieval books. One of the most 



266 



