NEW CORINTH.

Otago Witness, Issue 2988, 21 June 1911, Page 101

NEW CORINTH.

By Edith Searlb Grossmann. The genuine classical scholar would not waste a word on New Corinth, but there may be some people who, like myself, find a peculiar and half-melancholy, halfhopeful interest in the dim renaissance of once-famous nations and States. New Corinth, BaedekeV tells us, is only 60 years old, but it is already one of the bast specimens of a modern Greek town. For travellers it owes its importance to the fact that it is the place to stop at in order to visit- Old Corinth and AkroKorinthos (Aero-Corinth). For natural beauty it cannot be compared to Athens, Delphi, or Olympia, but yet it is picturesque. The buildings of sun-baked bricks, clay-coloured under a brilliant sky of blue, give it an aspect of poverty, that nevertheless is not repulsive. We wandrered through the town and along the beach at sunset, and sat looking down the Gulf.of Corinth. Belikon showed in relief against the glow of ' the west, and Perachora rose a shape of glorious blue. It was a hot and languid evening. There were few people about. A statuesque Greek widow in black, a figure of restrained grief, who looked as if she had been shut up all day, passed us, walking slowly along the shore. There were a few boats on the water, and near the canal the outlines of a man-of-war. This must have been the beach along which Byron's renegade hero, Alp (in "The Siege of Corinth"), wandered, though how he could have been, "within the range of a carbine's reach" from the Acro-Oorinth, which is between three and four miles away, I fail to see, nor how he strolled back again so soon to the temple, which Byron calls the Temple of Jupiter, in Old Corinth. Leaving the beach when the swift Eastern darkness had come down ov>r gulf and hills, we walked through the picturesque Agora. Here are sold flat cakes, black bread, and water melons, cut open and showing their pink flesh and black seeds temptingly in the heat; and the market stalls or booths are decked with, green boughs. In the market and in open shops picturesq<uely-clad men sit drinking coffee or smoking (if that term is correct) at their long water pipes—rather like grave, grown-up babies sucking at the tubes of bottles. Here, too, open to' the night, axe saloons where men sit gambling and fiercely quarrelling. Number's of Greek soldiers walked or marched past, fine handsome men in blue suits, which rather resemble young ladies' gymnasium suits. They wore blue tunics and short breeches/ white leggings, pointed and tasselled shoes, and a taeselled fez, and at their side is hung a long knifes The traveller sees a good deal of variety in the costumes of men and 1 women here. The people had not the Earns air of melancholy and oppression that I noticed on the West. The modern Greeks are not on the whole a beautiful race, compared to the Italians. The Corinthians were the handsomest that I saw Avhile in Greece, except in Corfu, which is partly Italian. At our hotel was a very interesting and agreeable Italian lady, as unlike as possible to the typical Italian woman. She was travelling about by herself, and her conversation showed unusual intelligence and culture. The Greeks she found "tres aimables"; and I was glad to hear at least one traveller say a good word for them. —The Drive to Old Corinth. The Unholy Demetrios. — Not being able to cover space with the ease of a Byronic hero, we hired a carriage, and were driven from New Corinth to Old Corinth, taking lunch with us. Byron himself rode on horseback, as he tells us in his cheerful opening to the fhost-and-wa,r versified romance of '"The iege of OoTinth." That was in the days of the Turkish dominion, before the upheaval of Greece, and anyone who dreams of travelling in Greece should make himseJf or herself acquainted with that pcem, for the half-unconscious picture it gives of pie-revolutionary modern Greece. It is curious to see how that age has gone by, and nearly all that marked it has been swept away. Perhaps it was rather more picturesque than the present era of a struggling, poverty-stricken people, still only half-free from foreign control. . Old tyrannies and cowrapt oppression and luxurious pomp are apt to be more romantic to visitors than a slow struggle towards justice and order and independence. But to return to Byron and his "gallant company." Some of them must have been Greeks or Philhellenes, as he tells us Some are rebels on .the hills That look along Epirus valleys. 4. ride on horseback is a more romantic journey than a carriage drive; but we get even with Byron, after leaving the carriage at Old Corinth, by driving up the Aero-Corinth, sitting sideways on a mule, with a wooden saddle and a shawl of Oriental dye laid over it, just as you may see Joseph and Mary in pictures of the flio-ht from Egypt. In other words, we ascended the hill in the true Oriental manner —the same to-day as 2000 years ago. So we saw the peasants riding slowly on their mules acrcss the brown rlainj adding a human touch of antiquity to its natural Orientalism. It is a barren plain or flat between the old and the n3W towns, with scarcely any vegetation except the large stone wells or cisterns, from which the water is drawn up by a horse on a treadmill. On this journey I saw the village oven, where the peasants cook in common. For the ascent of the hill (Aero-Corinth, the solitary peak above the old town) we had a young scamp of a Greek boy, who ran along by the side of our mule and inquired, as a naively impertinent child would do, about our personal and family affairs. His name, he told us, was Demetrios, and on the way pointed out a small painted chapel of the Hagios Demetrios (Saint or Holy Demetrios), but immediately added, with quite unnecessary candour, that it was not he n<&3 was the saint. Demetrics, however,

could on occasions be poetical, for when shewing us an old fig tree within the fortifications he added, "No figs now_; its hour is past." His natural unholiness was shown when he mounted the mule after we had left it, and capered off on it, belabouring it with a stick, and when ha asked from four to six times the price for a drink of milk. The Corinthians were, I believe, not famous in ancient days for strict probity.