34 



JOURNEY THROUGH MAINA. 



consideration of hospitality could bind from the exercise of their pro- 

 fession, and the stranger who ventured within their frontier was 

 taught to expect the loss of liberty, or even of his life, unless he re- 

 deemed them by a heavy ransom. Such were the representations of 

 the Turkish governors in the Morea, which were echoed by the Greek 

 merchants of Livadea and Napoli. It was easy to perceive much 

 exaggeration in these accounts ; for sometimes we had met with small 

 vessels commanded or manned by natives of Maina, who carried on 

 a coasting trade with other parts of the Levant, though not without 

 the imputation of occasional piracy ; and we learnt from them that 

 it was their policy to keep up as much as possible the alarming repu- 

 tation which the fears and hatred of the Turks had conferred upon 

 them. We determined on approaching the south of the Morea to 

 use every means of procuring accurate information of the state of this 

 almost unvisited district, and the result was that we not only passed 

 its boundaries, but received great gratification in witnessing from the 

 hospitality of its inhabitants a state of society very remote from that 

 which falls under the observation of a traveller in other parts of the 

 Levant. It should be remembered that I am describing Maina, as 

 it existed in 1795, when many of its inhabitants had never seen a 

 foreigner, and while they strictly adhered to their institutions and 

 customs, on which they had founded their freedom and inde- 

 pendence. 



The Maina, as is well known to every traveller in Greece, included 

 at the time I was there that part of Laconia between the gulphs of 

 Messene and Gythium, bounded on the north by the highest ridge of 

 Taygetus, from whence a chain of rugged mountains descends to 

 Cape Matapan, the southern termination of the country. We entered 

 it from the Messenian side, after visiting Calamata, a small but popu- 

 lous town, inhabited principally by Greeks who were subject to the 

 Pasha of the Morea. It was at this place that we procured the neces- 

 sary intelligence respecting our further progress, and as there are 

 some objects of classical interest in the vicinity of this little town, 

 which have hitherto been imperfectly described, and the geography 



