AN ISLAND WITH 300 CHURCHES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16234, 20 May 1916, Page 5 (Supplement)

AN ISLAND WITH 300 CHURCHES.

Of deep interest in the eyes of most of us is a little island, not much more than one hundred miles from Milos. This is the isle called Patmos, ever a sacred spot to • the Christian pilgrim. Patmos has (says the Sunday at Home) an entirely Greek population of 4000, mostly sponge fishers, and although in close proximity to Turkey, no Turks dwell oh the island, and no mosque has ever been erected where John was in the spirit on the Lord's day. The only export • from Patmos, according to an old geographer who visited the island a hundred years ago, was at that time cotton stockings, which were sent to Venice. The same authority adds that there were 300 churches on the is-land,-which, seeing that the number of dwelling-houses was only 700, suggests a rather handsome surplus of places of worship. The monastery in which John's name is perpetuated is a massive building flanked by towers like a fortress, and the-visitor is shown inevitably the grotto on i.the mountain in which it is claimed that John wrote his book. Over the grotto a small church has been erected. The isolation of the island gives a pathe- \ tic interest to John's description of the .heavenly; Jerusalem-when there should be "no more-sea." . I