Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/274

224 bulls granted by Byzantine emperors, ranging from the end of the 11th century to the taking of Constantinople, A.D. 1453, which, were shown to Ross, but which I did not see.99

That quaint old traveller Sandys, describing the monks at Patmos in the year 1610, stigmatizes them as "ignorant of letters, studious for their bellies, and ignominiously lazy, unless some few that give themselves to navigation, and become indifferent good pilots.100 I cannot say that the lapse of more than two centuries has added much to their erudition, though it may have somewhat abated their love of good cheer, now unknown in Patmos. They read the most crabbed abbreviations in the MSS. with facility,—more than this I cannot say for their learning; there was not one of them that had ever discovered that their Sophocles contains only two plays.

The monastery of Patmos is an ecclesiastical fortress, built at a period when the monks dreaded pirates instead of protecting them. It is consequently very strong, towering far above the town, and overlooking the landlocked harbours below; the scenery is very wild and has a treeless and desolate beauty, unlike that of any other Greek island which I have seen. The monastery is built in a succession of terraces with stone roofs, and is raised to a great height; the summit of the battlements commands an extensive view. In this panorama we saw, on the mainland, a rocky range of mountains above Scala Nova. All round the horizon seaward was a succession of islands,— "Spread far amid the melancholy main."