THE SINKING OF CHIOS.

Patea Mail, 2 June 1882, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE SINKING OF CHIOS.

Grave apprehensions are felt that what has been considered by certain pessimists as the panacea for the ills of Ireland is on the eve of befalling the Island of Chios, the most fruitful and beautiful of the isles of the Aegean. Submergence, as a wholesale reform of the wrongs and miseries of the Distressful Country, is an ancient notion winch, notwithstanding the lapse of three centuries, has not yet been brought within a measurable distance of practical politics. The poet Spenser, so far back as the palmy days of the Virgin Queen, “ heard it often wished that all that land were a sea-poole; which kind of speech,” he wisely observes, “ is tbe manner rattier of desperate men, farr driven, to wishe the utter ruine of that they cannot redress, than that of grave counsellors.” The fate which threatens “ the paradise of modern Greece,” however, involves no question of statesmanship, but is an episode in that long and fateful drama of physical change and vicissitude, of which even old Greek Anaxagoras caught fugitive glimpses, when he prophesied that if time did not fail the hills of Lampsacus would one day be the isles of a new sea. The forces of nature, ever working with unseen hands, moulding fresh landscapes and shaping novel waters for the electric ships of the future, appear to be at present steadily engaged on a vast measure of laud reform in Chios. The island is gradually sinking, and, according to advices from Athens, it is feared that it will before long entirely disappear beneath the waves. Ten years ago its area was given at 508, while the latest geographers put it at 861 square miles. Earthquakes are reported to be of constant, and indeed increasing occurrence, and hot springs are appearing in every direction. Should these forebodings unhappily be realised, one of the brightest and one of the bloodiest pages in the volume of the Old World will have been rudely torn out. The story of Chios reaches into the dawn of history. Whether or not it was the birthplace of

“ The blind old man of Ohio’s rocky isle,” or whether or not such a blind old man as Homer ever trod its idyllic shores, the island itself is inseparably associated with the music of Greek verse, and is full of poetic “ sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.” For a period its people were masters of the Eastern Mediterranean, and are said to have been the first who prostituted the gifts of air and water to the traffic in slaves — an abuse which provoked from the Oracle the noblest response that the reproving gods of Paganism ever communicated to man. In the great lonian revolt against Persia the Chians took a gallant part, and severely paid the penalty of their heroism. According to Herodotus, the Persians landed and “netted ” the unfortunate islanders and the naive Father of History gravely describes the operation: —■ “ Taking one another by the hand, they extended from the Northern to the Southern Sea ” —some thirty-two miles—“and so marched over the island, hunting out the inhabitants.” Among the names of Greek civilisation are those of the Chian tragic poet lon, the historian Theopompus, Theocritus the sophist, and Metrodorus, the physician and philosopher, who, among other noteworthy deliverances, declared the world to be eternal, and denied the existence of motion. Of the modern history of the island the most prominent phase is the part it suffered, rather than played, in the struggle for Greek Independence, and no more vivid and realistic picture of that epoch has been given than that furnished by M. Gennadius, in his recently - published story, “ Loukis Laras,” or the “ Reminiscences of a Chiote Merchant ” —an exquisite work of the school of “ The Vicar of Wakefield,” and one which has become a modern Greek classic. In 1822 the Greeks landed in the capital, took the citadel, and put the Turkish garrison to the sword. A strong Turkish force retaliated with merciless fury. The whole island was given up to pillage and massacre; some twenty thousand of both sexes and every age were butchered in cold blood ; as many more, chiefly women and children, were sold into slavery ; villages, farmsteads, country houses, gardens, and plantations were ruthlessly destroyed. The population was then from 140,000 to 150,000 : at present it is estimated at about 70,000, with a marine of some four or five hundred ships, and a brisk commerce in wine, oil, silk, fruit, and mastic —its staple production, of which it exports about 1500 cwt. annually. That Homer’s poems should survive Homer’s reputed birthplace, startling as it may seem, is but an illustration of those physical laws of fluctuation and recurrence, of upheaval and subsidence, which, according to the geologist, have swayed the stable sea and the unstable land throughout geological time. The fate which is feared for Chios has befallen Britain more than once, and the same forces which are lowering “ the golden lonian Isle ” to a basking ground for coral polypes and sea anemones, may raise it up again in a distant future, when Homer’s works will have perished and the name of Canaris will have been blotted from human memory. To the geologist there can be few more fascinating events than this gradual sub-,

mergence of 361 square miles of hill and valley, mastic grove and vineyard ; and no doubt the specialists and experts have their attention fixed on the rate at which the island is foundering, and the various phenomena which are associated with the steady evolution of Nature’s method. Whether Chios vyill eventually go down in an appalling cataclysm or settle slowly, inch by inch, till there is not an olive branch left for a dove’s foot to rest on, time alone can show. Nature works both ways—by patient tardiness and by sudden convulsion. Scotland has been rising, and large areas of England have been sinking for centuries, with little perceptible modification of our insular condition. On the other hand, a single stroke of earthquake at Catch, at the mouth of the Indus, submerged in 1819 a tract of land larger than the Lake of Geneva—an area of 221 square miles —and elevated a few miles off the “ Ullah Bund,” or Bank of God —an expanse of land 50 miles long, and in some places 16 miles broad—to a height of 10 feet above the level of the alluvial plain. In taking Chios the sea may give up some portion of her dead—some plot of earth that was by strange primal beast or bird in the days when man had not yet appeared. In such an event even the poets will refrain from weeping over the sunken cradle of the singer of the Iliad.