The Cruise of the Branwen

CRUISE OF THE BRANWEN of 5 500, living in neat white houses with paved streets. Though the name "Vathi" is evidently the Greek word for " deep " this little town has no such ancient origin; for the island was desolate and uninhabited throughout the Middle Ages, and only populated again by the Venetian Republic in the sixteenth century, when the convenience of this harbour led to the building of the little capital all round its beach. Its rise to real importance dates from the English sovereignty over the Ionian islands, and in the market-place there stands the bust of Sir Thomas Maitland, their first governor, to commemorate the English rule. Before his day the lthacans had voyaged only as far as Odessa or Trieste. But when they came in contact with a seafaring nation they travelled to lands much more distant. In the Transvaal, at the Cape, in Sydney or in :Mel– bourne, they went out to earn their living; but after eight or ten years, each, like Odysseus, comes back to his own Penelope, with the little fortune he has made so far from home. But I must turn again to Homer. " At the harbour's head," continues the passage I have just quoted," is a long-leaved olive-tree, and hard by is a pleasant cave and shadowy, sacred to the nymphs that are called the Naiads." And you will remember how grey-eyed Athene scattered the mist and showed the sea-worn wanderer the land where he was born, and bade him lay up safely in the cavern of the Naiads " his treasure, the gold and the unyielding bronze and fair 150