The Cruise of the Branwen

FOOTSTEPS OF ODYSSEUS, ETC. to the north, will bring you to the Bay of Liapades on the western coast, from which it is but a short walk to Palreo Castrizza, a monastery on a little rocky peninsula, where you may sit and dream, in a most marvellous garden, of the arrival of shipwrecked Odysseus so many a hundred years ago. He was washed ashore, you will remember, after a storm had wrecked the raft on which he started from the island of Calypso. Corfu was anciently called "Scheria," because that word is only an epithet of Corcyra, which was so named for a good reason. It was the "Island of the Black Cruiser," vavS' 80~ µe'Amva, and "Scheria "is derived from a Hebrew root mean– ing black. It was djstinguished by this name because upon its north-west coast, facing the Adriatic passage, there is a characteristically ihaped rock which seems the petrified image of a boat, with sails and rigging spread, and her little skiff towed astern behind her. Modern Greeks still call it" Karavi," the Boat-rock, and as long ago as the days of Pliny we hear of it as a landmark with a legend. " A Phalacro Corcyrre promontorio, scopulus in quern mutatam Ulyssis navem a simili specie fabula est." You will still see the name "Cape Palacrum" upon the map; and this is indeed the " black ship " in which the Phreacians brought Odysseus to his home in Ithaca. On her return from this voyage "nigh her came the shaker of the earth Poseidon, and he smote her into stone, and rooted her far below with the down-stroke of his hand. . . " 153