Ionian Islands

“ The Ionian Islands to be ceded to Greece,Art. IV. The limits of the Greek territory, determined by the arrangement concluded at Constantinople between the three Courts and the Ottoman Porte on the 21st of July, 1832, shall receive an extension by the union of the Ionian Islands with the Hellenic Kingdom, when such union, proposed by the Government of Her Britannic Majesty, shall have been found to be in accordance with the wishes of the Ionian Parliament [81] , and shall have obtained the assent of the Courts of Austria, France, Prussia, and Russia [82] . ”

“ I had long seen that Crete could not be governed from Athens without a course of such preparation as the Ionian Islands had had; they would never submit to prefects from continental Greece; they felt themselves, as they really are, a superior race, superior in intelligence and in courage; but the men from Athens had persuaded them that the only alternative to submission to the Sultan was annexation, and, meanwhile, the ships of Europe were carrying their families to Greece, where they were to remain practically as hostages for the fulfillment of the Greek plans. ”

“ The seven islands, which bore the name of the Septinsular Republic, are scattered along the coast from Epirus to the extreme south of the Morea. They are independent in thought and feeling of one another, and in the partition of the offices of government, under the British protection, a keen rivalry prevailed. No one probably will be found to hold, that that chapter of our history is worthy of its general strain. Sometimes, when we preached constitutional doctrine to Continental sovereigns, the case of the Ionian Islands was cast in our teeth. ”

“ The people of the Ionian Islands were eager to be allowed to enter into one system with the kingdom of Greece. It was idle to try to amuse them by telling them they constituted an independent republic, and were actually governing themselves, ... while they saw themselves presided over by an English Lord High Commissioner who was also the Commander-in-Chief of a goodly British army garrisoned in their midst. ... It is certain that they got a great deal of material benefit from the presence of the energetic road-making British power. But they wanted to be, above all things, Greek. ”

“ The reader will note that Dulichium, which means "Long Island," does not belong to the Ionian islands, but to the neighbouring group of the Echinades. Let us now see how the islands in the neighbourhood of Ithaca are described in the Odyssey. Ulysses says (ix. 21-26) :
"I dwell in Ithaca, an island which contains a high mountain called Neritum. ”

“ Between the Cyclades and Asia Minor lie the Sporades, which islands, as the name implies, are sown irregularly over that portion of the Aegean.
Just off the coast of Attica is a large island called by the ancients Euboea, but known to us as Negropont. Close to the Asian shores are the large islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, and Rhodes.
To the west of Greece lie the Ionian Islands, the largest of which was called Corcyra, now Corfu. The rugged island of Ithaca was the birthplace of Odysseus, or Ulysses, the hero of the Odyssey. ”

“ Greece, at the same time, does not share the disadvantage of Turkey, which is almost cut off from the western world by a mountain region difficult to cross. The Ionian Sea, to the west of the Peloponnesus, it is true, is, comparatively speaking, a desert; but farther north the Gulf of Corinth almost cuts in two the Greek peninsula, and the sight of the distant mountains of Italy, which are visible from the Ionian Islands, must have incited to an exploration of the western seas. ”

“ All difficulty is removed by supposing that the writer lived at Trapani and was drawing the Ionian islands from the, to her, familiar Ægadean group. A glance at the foregoing map will shew that she cannot have been drawing from the real Ionian islands. Ithaca cannot be tortured into lying "all highest up in the sea towards the West." It is completely covered by Samos. ”

“ OLIVE GROVE, CORFU
The voyage northward to Missolonghi is beautiful. The sea was dotted with white wings. The Greeks are bold sailors; one never observes here the timidity, the haste to seek refuge anywhere and everywhere, which is so conspicuous along the Riviera and the western coast of Italy. Throughout the Ionian archipelago, and it was the same later among the islands of the Ægean, it was inspiring to note the smallest craft, far from land, dashing along under full sail, leaning far over as they flew. ”

“ The dialect of the Ionians was distinguished from that of the Dorians and Æolians by clear and broad marks: the worship of the gods, which had a peculiarly joyful and serene cast among the Ionians, had been moulded into fixed national festivals [5] : and some steps towards the development of republican feeling had already been taken, before this separation occurred. The boundless resources and mobility of the Ionian spirit are shown by the astonishing productions of the Ionians in Asia and the islands in the two centuries previous to the Peisian war ”

“ In many respects the most interesting journey which I have made in Greece was my last one through Acarnania and Ætolia. To be sure, my last journey in Greece is always my best one; yet there was a special attraction in this journey from the fact that it was the fulfilment of a long-cherished desire. There was a gap in my knowledge of western Greece which I keenly felt. I had tramped over the Ionian Islands, visited Joannina and Dodona, and passed over the Pindos range into Thessaly. ”

“ It may be well to add a word here upon the other route into Greece, that by Brindisi and the Ionian Islands. It is fully as picturesque, in some respects more so, for there is no more beautiful bay than the long fiord leading up to Corinth, which passes Patras, Vostitza, and Itea, the port of Delphi. The Akrokeraunian mountains, which are the first point of the Albanian coast seen by the traveller, are also very striking, and no one can forget the charms and beauties of Corfu. ”

“ Expenses in all, ten francs, including boat, ices, and valet de place. The steamer was so hot that this short visit on shore was a great relief, Corfu being at this hour very breezy and shady. Every one says that the Ionian Islands are going to ruin since the departure of the English. This is from the want of capital and of enterprise. So it would seem as if people who have no enterprise of their own must be content to thrive secondarily upon that of other people. The whole type of Greek life, however, is opposed to the Occidental type. ”

“ In Greece, we know, by the unanimous and constant testimony of all who saw him there, that the rare fits of melancholy he experienced, all arose from the same cause. During his sojourn in the Ionian Islands, as soon as letters from Italy had calmed his uneasiness, finding himself surrounded by general esteem, affection, and admiration, seeing justice dawn for him, and confusion for his enemies, being consoled also with the prospect of a future, and that, with heart at ease, he might at last shed happiness around him ”

“ They snatch the meat, defiling all they find,
And, parting, leave a loathsome stench behind."
—VIRGIL'S Æneid, B. III.
North of the Strophades, along the western coast of Greece, were the six Ionian islands known in Grecian history as Paxos, Zacyn'thus, Cephalo'nia, Ith'aca (the native island of Ulysses) , Leu'cas (or Leuca'dia) , and Corcy'ra (now Corfu) , which latter island Homer calls Phæa'cia, and where he places the fabled gardens of Alcin'o-us. It was King Alcinous who kindly entertained Ulysses in his island home when the latter was shipwrecked on his coast. ”

“ But even what may be considered as common experiences have affected the individual islands in different ways; in the matter of population, for instance, Corfu has undergone much more important modifications than Ithaca.
The Ionian islands consist almost entirely of Cretaceous and Tertiary beds, but in Corfu Jurassic deposits belonging to various horizons have also been found. The oldest beds which have yet been recognized are shales and hornstones with Liassic fossils. ”

“ The Ionian Islands were ceded by Great Britain to Greece in 1864. The great break-up came in 1878. The abortive treaty of San Stefano, concluded in that year, reduced the Turkish possessions in the Peninsula to Albania, Epirus, Thessaly and a portion of southern Thrace. A large Bulgarian principality was created extending from the Danube to the Aegean and from the Black Sea to the river Drin in Albania; it received a considerable coast-line on the Aegean and abutted on the Gulf of Salonica under the walls of that town. ”

“ Some sites in Asia Minor and the islands adjoining, such cities as Samos, Camirus in Rhodes, and the Ionian colonies on the Black Sea, have furnished us with a mass of ware of the Ionian class, but it seldom bears interesting subjects; it is essentially decorative. For Ionian ware which has closer relation to Greek mythology and history we must turn elsewhere. ”

“ While in the Ionian islands Church was ordered, at his own suggestion, to raise a regiment of Greek light infantry, similar to the Maltese Fencibles, for the efence of the islands, of which he himself was made major on 9 Sept. ”

“ In the centre comes the Ionian dodecapolis, a group consisting of ten towns on the mainland, together with the islands of Samos and Chios. Of these three groups, the Ionian is incomparably the most important. The Ionians also occupy Euboea and the Cyclades. Although it would appear that Cyprus (and possibly Pamphylia) had been occupied by settlers from Greece in the Mycenaean age, Greek tradition is probably correct in putting the colonization of Asia Minor and the islands of the Aegean after the Dorian migration. ”

“ The Ionian cities thus conquered consisted of twelve states—three in Caria, seven in Lydia, and two islands. [1] Of these the most populous and powerful were Ephesus and Miletus, and the latter had made such a strenuous resistance to Croesus and his predecessors that it obtained specially favourable terms upon its submission. Though never politically powerful, the Ionians of Asia had been an adventurous, busy, and thriving mercantile people. ”

“ There is scarcely a single point "where, in clear weather, a mariner would feel himself left in a solitude between sky and water; the eye reaches from island to island, and easy voyages of a day lead from bay to bay." Greek towns, including very ancient places, were scattered along the western coast of Asia Minor, between the mountains and the shore. The Aegean was studded with Greek islands. These, together with the islands in the Ionian Sea, on the west, formed a part of Greek territory. ”

“ H.M. Paget, the artist, I went to Corfu and hired the Kestrel, my old friend of the Cretan days, and I decided to follow the track of Ulysses in his return to Ithaca from Troy. Beginning at Santa Maura we examined every point in the Ionian Islands to which any illusion is made in the "Odyssey" as far as Cerigo and Cerigotto, meeting a storm off the former island which might well have ended our trip. ”

“ But these islands have always been considered by the British Government, ever since the Septinsular Republic was placed under the protection of England, as belonging to the Ionian State; and it is well known that officers quartered at Cerigo have been in the habit of going to Cervi for purposes of amusement, and that that island has always been held to be part of the Ionian territory. ”

“ The increase was partly due to emigration from the neighbouring Turkish provinces and the Ionian Islands. Besides the Athenians, mostly congregated at Nauplia, there were the Chiote exiles at Modon, Thebans and Lepantines (after the peace) , Cretans from Canea and even Bulgarians. Cornaro alone in his two years of office was successful in inducing 6000 emigrants to enter the Morea, where he gave them lands between Patras and Aigion and at Kalavryta, and promised them exemption from taxes. ”

“ The sympathy of the Ionians for Orthodox Russia was natural, especially as many Greeks from the Turkish provinces had settled in the islands without having forgotten their homes on the mainland. They took part in the sieges of Patras and Koron, while after the base desertion of the Greeks by the Russians the islands became the refuge of many defeated insurgents. These refugees were, however, delivered up by the Venetians to the Turks, and nothing but a vigorous Russian protest saved from punishment two Ionian nobles who had taken up arms on her side. ”

“ The conquered Achæans were forced either to emigrate to Asia and Italy, or to content themselves with the northern coast of their peninsula, from which they expelled its Ionian inhabitants, and gave it their own name, Achaia. The Ionians, after resting a few years in Attica, whose people were their kinsmen, sought more space in the Cyclades, in Chios and Samos, or on the neighboring coasts of Asia Minor. In the fertile region between the Hermus and Mæander, and on the islands, twelve Ionian cities [38] sprang up, and became rich and flourishing states. ”

“ In historic times it was applied to the inhabitants of (1) Attica, where some believed the Ionians to have originated; (2) parts of Euboea; (3) the Cycladic islands, except Melos and Thera; (4) a section of the west coast of Asia Minor, from the gulf of Smyrna to that of Iasus (see Ionia) ; (5) colonies from any of the foregoing, notably in Thrace, Propontis and Pontus in the west, and in Egypt (Naucratis, Daphnae) ; some authorities have found traces of an ancient Ionian population in (6) north-eastern Peloponnese. ”