Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/313

Rh shore, and the Latin town on the heights above. These Latter, who are all Catholics, are descendants of the Italian families who occupied so much of the Archipelago in the Middle Ages. Several of them assured me that since the outbreak of the Russian war they had been exposed to many insults when passing through the Greek quarter, being constantly invited by the populace "to come to the font and be rebuptized," the Greeks not considering the rite of baptism valid unless performed by a priest of their own faith. This feeling of antipathy between the Latin and Greek populations prevails all through the Archipelago, and if not checked from without, may some day lead to religious feuds as intense as that of the two Egyptian towns Ombos and Tentyra, described in Juvenal. We saw something of the impleasant temper of the Greeks at Syra one evening, when the band of the "Leander" was sent on shore to play for the amusement of the town. A very dirty and disorderly rablile crowded upon the part of the Piazza where the ladies were seated, so rudely as almost to upset their chairs. The local authorities very properly interfered; but the people murmured at their very temperate remonstrance, and I heard one unwashed and somewhat noisy representative of the Demos of Syra upbraid a policeman for thus doing his duty, and say to him, in a menacing tone, that he was annoying the people. I have too often occasion to remark that the lower orders in the Archipelago have not yet learnt that good manners are perfectly compatible with free institutions.