Come Over Into MACEDONIA

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 9, 9 December 1936, Page 4

Come Over Into MACEDONIA

IN THE STEPS OF ST. PAUL

by H. V. MORTON

(Article No. 38)

YFHEN the ship anchored in the bay of Kavalla, 1 went ashore in a rowing-boat. I saw an exquisite town of red and white houses piled on a hill beside the sea. An old castle on the liill-top held its crenellated walls against a blue sky, and at the back, bridging a valley, strode a fine aqueduct, which at first I though was Roman, but is actually Venetian. Kavalla is the great tobacco town of Macedonia. The big buildings on the water-front are tobacco warehouses, where the leaf is stored and matured. This town is the only one that sends Communist members to the Creek Parliament at Athens. “When there is plenty of work, we are constitutional,” said a tobacco worker, “but when there is no work we are Bolsheviki.” Such frankness was charming. ❖ QITEPPING ashore, I saw a picturesque bay where long-masted sailing ships were unloading wood from Romania, firewood from the nearby island of Thassos, and charcoal from Mount Athos. There was a fish market near the harbour, full of the strangest fish and the most poisonouslooking shell-fish I have ever seen. A polite fishmonger offered me an angry

oyster the colour of flame, which, to the amusement of tho fish market, I declined.

Drama—and the old Turkish frontline on the Salonika fronts—passes through the ruins of this once magnificent Roman colony. * FOR many centuries Philippi has re--1 mained undiscovered, but the French archaeologists have uncovered acres of marble streets and remains of public buildings. I walked down from the road into the market-place of Philippi, an enormous square, once lined with marble pillars, and so perfect in parts that the water-channels running round it still carry off the rains in the wet season. These ruins are miles away from any village. No one lives there but a watchman, who inhabits a little shed on the road above the market-place. There is still much to be discovered which now lies lost in the fields and marshes. I asked the watchman if any part of tho ruins were associated with St. Paul. He led me some way up the hill at the back and pointed to a deep cavern. On its walls I saw traces of ancient plaster. “That,” he said, “is the prison of St. Paul.” I believe that this place may have been an ancient church, but I am inclined to think that the prison of a big Roman colony would have been a stone building and

not a hole in the rock. It was in Philippi that Paul encountered one of the wandering soothsayers so common in Roman times. She was a girl who was led round tho cities by her “masters,” who interpreted her ravings and took money from those who consulted her. In Eastern cities there are still many feeble-minded persons who follow the stranger, uttering strange, and sometimes alarming noises ; and in ancient times such persons, especially in Greece, were considered to be possessed of a Pythonic spirit of divination. No doubt the sorceress of Philippi was one of them. Paul’s interference with this “magic” landed him in prison at Philippi, front which he was delivered by an earthquake, “so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors wero opened, and every one’s bands were loosed.”

Like so many towns which look delightful from tho sea, on closer acquaintance Kavalla turned out to bo a warren of narrow, unpaved Turkish streets, leading steeply to the hollow ruin of tho castle. But I was interested in a church called St. Nicholas, which stands near the quay. In Paul’s time this town was Neapolis, the port of Philippi. When Paul heard the voice from Macedonia, crying, “Come over into Macedonia and help us,” it was in this harbour that he stepped ashore. The priest in tho church of St. Nicholas told mo an interesting story. “When the Turks were here,” he said, “this church was a mosque; but Christians always revered it because it is believed that on this spot St. Paul stepped ashore from Asia Minor. \ou seo this circle in tho pavement? A big plane-tree once grew here, marking the very place, but the Bulgarians cut it down in the war.” “But why,” J asked, “is your church dedicated to St. Nicholas and not to St. Paul?” “Ah,” ho replied, “that is because of tho fishermen. Many years ago, before tho Turks came, this church was dedicated to St. Paul. Tho Turks conquered us and turned the church into a mosque. After the last war the mosque became a church again, and the fishermen, who paid for tho restoration, wanted tho church dedicated to St. Nicholas, who is powerful guardian of fishermen and sailors, far better, oven, than the groat Hagios Pavlos himself.” I hired a decrepit car in Kavalla and drove over tho mountains to the ruins of Philippi. The main road to

This incident has been criticised as impossible by many commentators. But Sir William Ramsay, whose acquaintance with Turkish prisons commands attention, has written: “Anyone that has seen a Turkish prison will not wonder that the doors were thrown open: each door was merely closed by a bar, and the earthquake, as it passed along the ground, forced tho door posts apart from each other, so that the bar slipped from its hold, and the door swung open. ... In the great earthquakes of 1880 at Smyrna, and in 1881 at Scio, I had the opportunity of seeing and hearing of the strangely capricious action of an earthquake which behaves sometimes like a playful, good-natured sprite, when it spares its full terrors.” Two things impressed and interested me at Philippi. One was the remains of the great Via Egnatia, the great Roman highway to the East: it was one of the famous roads of tho Roman Empire. This paved road, with the wheel ruts of chariots and wagons on it, lies twenty feet below the present road-level, and a good stretch of it traverses a section of Philippi. I walked for some distance out of Philippi, towards a small stream that runs through the plain. As soon as I saw this stream, T recalled tho words of St. Luke in the Acts: “And on the Sabbath we went out of the city by a river side, where prayer was wont to be made; and we j sat down and spake to the women I which resorted thither. And a- certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us; whose : heart the Lord opened, that she at- ! tended unto the things which were j spoken of Paul.” j This must he the stream on whose banks Lydia was baptised, for there is no other of any size. The watch- ' man told mo that the modern Turkish name for it is Bounarbashi, which means headstream. As I sat on the banks of this river, watching a herd

of cattle wade in among tho watercress, a bare-legged, massive girl came down to the stream with a knife. She tucked up her skirts and waded into the water, where she began to cut the cress. “Lydia!” I said to myself. I was about to take a photograph of her when, seeing me, she threw down tho watercress and crying “O’hee, o’hee, —peege’-neto!” stampeded out of the water in terror. In lonely places in the world there are people who hate tho idea that some stranger may take away some image of them in a little black box, and I am not sure that 1 blame them.

In rage, Lydia was charming, I had no idea that such a sturdy, muscular creature could bo so girlish. She stamped her bare foot at me and made pettish movements with the knife, standing still and wondering whether she would risk another descent to the Stream. I sent the watchman over to try and soothe her, but she became even more temperamental, stamping her bare feet and waving her knife. So I retreated some distance and took her photograph with my telephoto lens. So can science play the cad! That afternoon I had a rough drive through Serrcs to Drama. This dusty Macedonian outpost looked to me like the world’s end. There were a few soldiers returning from leave, sitting under the roof of the station cafe, while a patient Armenian tried to sell them a carpet.

T SAT down and waited two hours 1 for the train to Salonika, drinking cup after cup of Turkish coffee and eating Turkish delight speared on little sticks. The village idiot, a weirdlooking youth whose hair grew right down his neck at the hack, a horrible phenomenon which I had never before seen, kept sliding up, touching me softly on tho arm and bursting into fits of laughter. I became quite used to him.

The mountains changed colour it: the sunlight, the dust swirled up under the hoofs of approaching horsemen, and at last a bedraggled trait: puffed into the little station. (To be continued.)