Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/312

262 some French naval officers on a visit to Eleusis, where, on our arrival, we were ignominiously pelted with stones by the boys of the place. I was told that this had become a common practice of late.

Sir T. Wyse seems tolerably satisfied with the new Greek Ministry. They will, I dare say, act as the "Western Powers wish so long as our troops are at the Piræus; but the moment they withdraw, they will behave as Greek ministers usually do. The great mass of the people does not seem very uneasy at the occupation. Some mortification, doubtless, is felt, though the Greeks are rather vain than proud; but as the inhabitants of Athens have let all the houses in the Phasus for barracks at an unheard-of rent, and are every day engaged in selling beef and bread for a large body of troops, the presence of foreign bayonets is not perhaps quite so disagreeable as might have been supposed.

The Greek minister the other day gave a grand banquet to the English, French, and Greek officers in the Acropolis. The dinner was laid out in the Parthenon, which seems a great desecration; but the place was not inappropriate for the inauguration of a new epoch, if this is to be one.

On my leaving Athens, Captain King, being about to take H.M.S. "Leander" on a cruise to look for pirates, kindly offered me a passage as far as Syra, where our arrival was a source of great satisfaction to that part of the population which does not belong to the Greek Church. This place consists of two distinct towns,—the Greek town on the