Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/132

104 house, the landlord, like a true Mytileniote, wanted me to pay a higher rent, and as our contract was not on stamped paper, and was drawn up by an amateur lawyer, he might have tried litigation, had he not been afraid of going to law with a British consul. In writing the receipt, he forgot to sign his name till he was reminded. Such oversights are very characteristic of Mytilene.

The other day, I received a letter from the Pasha, which he wrote with the greatest unwillingness, under threat of an appeal to Constantinople. He, too, was as careless as my friend the Greek; for he sent the letter forgetting to put his official seal to it! This oversight was of course detected at once; the Pasha then made a lame apology.

The house will ultimately become the dower of my landlord's daughter, now about eight years old; for, by a custom very general in the Turkish Archipelago, every father is bound, on his daughter's marriage, to endow her Avith a furnished house.$44$ The architect is a native genius, who is styled Maestro Luca. When I first asked him to submit to me the plan of the house, he stooped down and drew on the ground with a bit of stick a few rude lines, marking out the position of the different rooms. The foundations were then laid out, and the walls built, entirely by rule of thumb, without either plan or specifications. The result is much better than I expected. The house is airy, spacious, and not uncomfortable, notwithstanding the rudeness of the carpentry. No doors or windows in Mytilene will shut properly. Locks and hinges are of the