Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/173

Rh insured at Malta, in due course the fraud was discovered by the under-writers, and satisfaction demanded from the Turkish Government. Mr. Leonidas, the chief mourner, is a young Cassiote who was educated at Athens, where lie acquired notions of a civilization unknown to his pirate countrymen. He denounced the persons who had plundered the ship, and through his means the facts were proved against them. In revenge they burnt his house and his young sister alive in it, and attempted his own life; so that now he lives at Rhodes, being afraid to go to Cassos.

Now the fray in Alexandria, in which one Greek was killed, and in consequence of which another was executed, arose out of the long-standing Cassiote feud between Leonidas and the pirates whom he denounced. If this feud had never been, the man would never have been killed, nor his supposed murderer executed. Leonidas, a near relation of the man executed, tried to save his life by making a sort of compromise with other accused parties in Cassos. Failing in this, he now takes his turn in exacting vengeance; and on the day after the execution, he appeared at the Mejlis, and denounced the widow who had shown such blood-thirstiness, as one of the persons who had burnt his house and sister. The answer which the widow gave to this charge in my presence was very characteristic. "I thought," she said, "that it was always lawful to burn the house of an enemy."

I foresee that Cassos from this day forth will be