ISLAND OF NAXOS. 97 
inelegant in their appearance for the taste of CHAP. 
the owners 2 . 
The want of a proper port for large shipping 
has saved Naxos from many a visit on the part 
of the Turks. We were told that not a single 
Moslem could be found in the whole island, and 
that many of the inhabitants of the interior had 
never seen a Turk: but they sometimes 'experi- 
ence the honour of a call from their masters, en 
passant; and then, " upon the arrival of the 
meanest commander of a galliot," says Tourne- 
fort 3 , " neither Latins nor Greeks ever dare 
appear but in red caps, like the common galley- 
slaves, humbling themselves before the pettiest 
officer." As soon as the Turks have left them, 
nothing is to be heard but tables of their genea- 
logy; some deducing their origin from the 
Paleologi, or from the Comnenii ; others from the 
noblest Venetian -families 4 . The island was for 
three hundred years the residence of princes 
appointed by the Venetians as Dukes of the 
(2) The author has seen discarded old black-letter Bibles in the chests 
of country churches ; and once found a copy of Miles Coverdale's 
revised translation of the Scriptures in the hands of a Welch house- 
keeper, who was preparing to use it in coyering preserves. 
(3) Tnurnef. Voy. du Levant, Lett. V. torn. I. p. 257- fyon, 1717. 
(4) Ibid. 
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