Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/326

276 the Greeks in the town collected round the house and in the adjoining streets; at the door were men carrying baskets on then' heads, with melons and bread, and other offerings for the poor; inside was the sound of weeping and wailing of the conventional kind, which is always thought necessary in funerals in southern countries. I made my way to the door, and was immediately accoutred with various white scarfs and sashes—one of which is tied on the left arm. The pictures on Greek vases show that the victorious athletes in antiquity wore just such a decoration. When one of these sashes was offered to my Albanian cavass, he resisted the attempt to put it on his arm with true Mussulman scorn. All these preparations having been made, I was told off with my colleagues, the French, Austrian, and Sardinian consuls, to our respective posts as pall-bearers; and so we marched through the narrow, crowded, and dirty streets of Mytilene, under a blazing hot sun, for upwards of an hour, till we had perambulated the whole town and come round to the same point.

Possibly this perambulation may be a relic of the old classical decursio or solemn procession round the funeral pile. Very weary work it was: I got lost in a reverie more than once, and fell to studying the exquisite embroidery on the Archbishop's robe, who was walking immediately before me. Having been charged to buy embroidery for the South Kensington Museum, I thought what a grand acquisition I could make if I could purchase that and the state robe of the Pasha, which had figured in the Bairam