Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/119

Rh forks, but the Aga ate with his fingers. Carving there was none; each man made a scaro into the lamb wherever he thought proper; and, looking at the question with English eyes, I certainly felt that this mode of eating produced a great waste of the raw material. But it was all Homeric, and the air was so fresh, and the herbs so aromatic, that much in the manner of feeding passed unobserved, which would not be pleasant to look at in a dining-room. Then we had wine of the place, which seemed to us, in such an atmosphere, quite as good as the best Bordeaux, and abundance of caviare and water-melons and grapes. The Greeks ate their breakfast at a separate table; the day being one of their fasts, their meal consisted entirely of caviare and fruit. After a certain number of pipes, we got under weigh again, and taking leave of our hospitable friends till the evening, started in a new direction to see a place called Pyrrha, on the eastern shore of Port Kalloni, the site of one of the ancient cities of Lesbos, where the Greeks told us we should find, "wonders." Pliny mentions that this town was swallowed up by the sea. Strabo speaks of it as destroyed, all but the or suburb, which was still inhabited in his time.$23$ Specimens of its ancient copper coinage are still extant. The modern name and other circumstances fix its site at the entrance of a small bay. The position is marked as Pyrrha in the Admiralty chart. No. 1654, but not in the larger chart, No. 1664. Our road lay across the neck of land which separates Port Iero or Olivieri from Port Kalloni, and was the roughest I