CHAPTER IV
ATHENS—"WE HAVE LOVED HELEN; MUST WE DIVORCE HER?"
If only it were always calm, how delightful it would
be to travel by sea!
From Malta to Athens, indeed, is not a long run; but when every moment you are tossed from side to side, at the mercy of all the winds in heaven, most things have a disagreeable look. As we approached the brown and arid coast of this historic peninsula, I thought how unjust it seems to have driven the Ottoman Greeks out of fertile Turkey to a fatherland that cannot feed them. You cannot obtain blood from a stone, nor fruitful crops from an unfertile soil. What is Greece to do for these poor people, who cannot all turn merchants or moneylenders?
Before landing at Pireus, with my Italian escort, I took the precaution to investigate the rate of exchange—250 drachmas to the £1 sterling.
"It is strange," said I, "that we have none of this inconvenience in Turkey. There one always gets a fair 'exchange,' and no worry."
The steamer slows down to anchor, and on all sides we are hustled by modern Shylocks. "Two hundred and fifty drachmas for a pound," I asked, "how many for five shillings?" And the Greek answered: "Fifteen." "Come and listen to this Greek arithmetic," I called in Italian; but the man understood me, and let out a hearty laugh. Though I turned from him, without malice, he promptly raised his price from fifteen to forty-five (!), and in the end I
