executing a plan which I thought most necessary for my undertaking,
During my stay at Algiers, the Rev. Mr Tonyn, the king's chaplain to that factory, was absent upon leave. The bigotted catholic priests there neither marry, baptize, nor bury the dead of those that are Protestants.
There was a Greek priest,[1] Father Christopher, who constantly had offered gratuitously to perform these functions. The civility, humanity, and good character of the man, led me to take him to reside at my country house, where I lived the greatest part of the year; besides that he was of a chearful disposition, I had practised much with him both in speaking and reading Greek with the accent, not in use in our schools, but without which that language, in the mouth of a stranger, is perfectly unintelligible all over the Archipelago.
Upon my leaving Algiers to go on my voyage to Barbary, being tired of the place, he embarked on board a vessel, and landed at Alexandria, from which soon after he was called to Cairo by the Greek patriarch Mark, and made Archimandrites, which is the second dignity in the Greek church under the patriarch. He too was well acquainted in the house of Ali Bey, where all were Georgian and Greek slaves; and it was at his solicitation that Risk had desired the patriarch to furnish me with an apartment in the Convent of St George.
- ↑ Vid. Introduction.
