Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/70

46 couple of days before going to Mytilene. We had brought letters of introduction to Her Majesty's Consul Mr. Brant, and also to Mr. Hanson, who both received us with that genial hospitality for which Smyrna has always been so justly celebrated.

Here I saw the fine collection of coins belonging to M. Ivanoff, the Russian Consul-General, which is particularly rich in specimens from the western and southern coasts of Asia Minor. He also possesses a very fine head of a Satyr in red marble, found at Aidin, the ancient Tralles. From the expression of anguish in the features, I should imagine that this represents the Satyr Marsyas when about to imdergo liis terrible doom at the hand of Apollo.

As Mytilene lies directly on the track of the French and Austrian mail packets which ply between Smyrna and Constantinople, it has the benefit of steam communication every two days, an advantage which few islands in the Archipelago enjoy.

One of these steamers conveyed us accordingly to our new home, where we landed at eleven o'clock p.m. The night was very dark, and the twenty-three packages which formed our luggage were picked out by the aid of one very inefficient lantern on deck, and pitched into a shore-boat, amid the vociferations of a swarm of Greek boatmen, mingled with an occasional deep sonorous growl from a Turkish custom-house ofiicer. We should have felt very forlorn at being thrown out on a strange shore like a shipwrecked plank, had it not been for the kindness of two Mytileniote gentlemen, Dr. Bargigli and M. Amira, who had come on board to