IS 
LAND & WATER J»ly 5, 19^7 
A Day's Holiday in the JEgean 
Bv A. G. White 
Brother Diodorus 
IT has been the 
happy lot of 
many who are 
serving in our 
land or sea forces 
in these tremen- 
dous times to find 
themselves able, 
cither of their own 
will or impelled by 
the big toe of ne- 
cessity, to leap 
over the wall of 
daily routine and 
set their feet in the 
large room of ex- 
perience. Especi- 
ally is this so with 
those who have 
found themselves 
in the Eastern 
theatres of war ; 
• whether in war- 
weary Macedonia ; 
in Mesopotamia, 
" that comfortable 
word " ; marching 
arduously into the Promised Land, or stationed in the liastern 
Mediterranean, that inexhaustible fount of mythology and 
romance. 
It was while at Stavros, serving in the senior ship of the 
squadron su]iporting the right flank of our army on the 
Struma front, that the present writer had an experience 
which would not have come his way had not the whirlwind 
of war swept him out of a quiet 
English city and dropped him 
■amidst the Ai)gean Isles. This 
experience was a visit to the 
Peninsula of Mount Athos, the 
great home of nionasticismin, the 
Eastern Orthodox Church. In 
ordinary times, a permit to visit 
the Holy Mount can only be ob- 
tained from the Patriarch of Con- 
stantinople or from the represent- 
atives of Mount Athos at Salonika. 
But under present conditions the 
granting of permission to land 
there rests with the local British 
Naval Authorities. Not that such 
authority could or would supersede 
the Athonian rule that nothing 
ttha is not of the male sex may and 
or live in the Peninsula ; for as 
weeks grow into months and 
months into years, the Navy itself 
in these waters passes a celibate, 
almost monastic existence. 
Mount Athos is the easternmost 
of the three peninsulas which 
run in a south-easterly direction 
from the ancient Chalcidice. It 
rises from a low-lying isthmus 
up to the mountain whose six 
thousand feet command the 
Northern yligean. Across the nar- 
row isthmus can still be traced the 
line of the canal cut by Xerxes in 
483 B.C. This arduous enter- 
prise was undertaken partly that 
the Persian fleet might the > 
better co-operate with the movements of the anny along the 
coasts of Thrace and Macedonia ; partly, no doubt, to avoid 
the fate which had overtaken a previous naval expedition 
against Greece, when the greater portion of the Persian fleet 
'liad been wrecked in a violent storm while trying to round 
the huge and perilous promontory. Mcunt Athos itself is 
always grandly beautiful, now floating like a magic isle 
upon a sea of mist, now crowned with dazzling cumulus, 
in the level ravs of the westering sun it, glows rosy pink, 
shading to violet, purple, grey and black in quick gradation 
as the short twilight deepens into night. 
On the south-eastern spur of the Mount there still live 
Troglodites. These solitilry cave-dwelling hermits pass their 
days far removed from the world, pcrcbcM high ou some 
Bell Tower, Batopedios Monastery 
seeminglj' inaccessible rock, a late survival of the earliest 
form of eastern monasticism in the Christian era. From t hese 
was developed in the tenth century the monastery of the 
Most Great and Most Holy Lavra, the first organised com- 
munity on Mount Athos. This monastery is delightfully 
situated on the lower slopes of the Holy Mount, looking across 
the blue ^Egean sea towards Leinnos Isle. There are some 
twenty otlier monastic foundations scattered up and down 
the Peninsula, all of them Greek but three ; the Russian 
monastery of S. Panteleimon, the Bulgarian Zographo, and 
the Serbian Kiliander. The ancient founders of the mon- 
asteries knew well how to choose their sites and how to build. 
Many are gems of graceful beauty. Especially do they so 
appear when viewed from the sea under the lavish brilliance 
of an eastern sun. As you sail down the coast, you catch 
glimpses of delicate green domes, golden crosses, red roofs, 
shiniuK through and above the trees which grow so abundantly, 
even right down to the sea. 
It was early on a lovely autumn morning that a small 
party of us left Stavros in a fast patrol craft bound for the 
monastery of Batopedios, which we reached after a three 
hours' run. This monastery is charmingly placed, by the 
sea, at the foot of clive-crowned vine-clad hills. We anth ored 
in the quiet sheltered bay, and after a quick luncii pulled 
to the stone jetty, where there had assembled a party of monks 
to greet us as we landed. After mutual, salutations, they 
conducted us up the sloping paved roadway to the main gate. 
Tlnuugh this we passed into a large courtyard, cool, delight- 
ful, old-world. To the right, a wide terraced pave led up to 
another courtyard surrounded by ancient monastic buildings. 
Opposite the'entrance in the main court was the monastery 
chapel and a bell tower with clock. By the clock hung a bell 
on which the passing hours were struck by the figure of an 
old-time warrior, who was destined to afford us some amuse- 
ment later in the day. On reach- 
ing the courtyard we were first 
taken, according to the hospitable 
custom of the monks, to the large 
upper room, a many-windowed 
guest chamber looking out over 
the sea. On the walls were 
numerous paintings and photo- 
graphs of divers ecclesiastics of 
the Eastern Orthodox Church, 
and crowned heads of a former 
generation. Some of these latter, it 
must be admitted, were rather mon- 
strous colour schemes. Amongst 
them we noticed a familiar por- 
trait of Queen Victoria, similar to 
the one which, accompanied 
almost invariably by a portrait of 
the late Mr. Gladstone, adorns 
so many of our cottage homes. 
In the guest-room, we were 
greeted by more of the brethren, 
one of them being the secretary 
of the monastery, a benign monk 
of Falstaffian proportions, yet 
withal not without grace. Cigar- 
ettes were handed round, and we 
were soon all busy talking, one of 
our party acting as interpreter-in- 
chief. There was then brought in 
a tray containing a jar of delicious 
quince jelly, with spoons and 
tumblers of water. With oft- 
repeated "eucharisto," to air our 
little Greek, we each in turn 
took a spoonful of jelly and 
glass of water. Coffee followed, 
and red wine, a pleasing local vintage. The monks were 
eager for the latest war news and heard with much indignation 
that the Greek Government had allowed the Bulgars to seize 
Kavala. They were also considerably perturbed on learning 
that the enemy had burnt some of the farms in Macedonia 
belonging to the Athonite monasteries. (Most of these 
communities, it may be noted, draw considerable revenues 
from their scattered farms in Macedonia, Thaso, Imbros, 
Lemnos and Samothrace.) After leaving the guest-clmmber, 
we were taken to an octagonal building in the same wing. 
The lower storey was used as a museum of local antiquities ; 
the tipper was the monastery library which contained some 
exquisite scripts. A few of these were over a thousand years 
old ; one in particular, a book of homilies, was a priceless 
