the more able to encounter the dangers and hardships we might still reasonably expect to meet with before we had brought our travels to a conclusion. What made this gloomy season pass away the more agreeably, was the good company of our countrymen and other European merchants, who maintain a cheerful correspondence one with another, by whom we were accommodated with every thing even beyond our desires, and treated with all the tokens of a sincere and generous friendship. In a word, we had elegant fare, accompanied with charming conversation; and in particular we spent our christmas, the usual time of feasting and rejoicing among Christians, with the greatest pleasure and satisfaction, paying and receiving mutual visits and compliments, and indulging ourselves in innocent mirth, with the same freedom as if we had been in our native country, or any other part of Europe.

The beginning of the new year, we began to look out care* fully for a passage to Sidon, where the French have a consul who goes annually to Jerusalem, as has been already mentioned, to whom our good friend and companion M. Du Marais was to carry letters from the consul of the same nation at Smyrna. After we had waited with impatience till the middle of January, but to no purpose, we thought it not proper to let slip an opportunity that offered, of embarking in a Turkish saick or merchantman, bound to Tripoli in Syria, which was also to touch at Rhodes and Cyprus. Accordingly. we made a bargain with the master of the vessel, put our tents and other baggage on board, and having taken a hearty farewell of our European friends, whose kindness we ought always to remember and mention with the utmost gratitude, we sailed from Smyrna the 18th of Janu ary, 1733, with a favorable gale at East, and as pleasant weather as could be expected in the winter season.

Having got safely out of the bay of Smyrna, and doubled Cape Carabouron, we put into the port of Scio to wait for a North wind to carry us out of the Archipelago, and the wind happily coming about to that point the next morning, we weighed anchor, and the day following passed by the Western Cape of Samos,

*

sup

leaving Nacaria and the isles of Fourni on our right. In this Cape of Samos the sailors tell us there appears a light in the night time, which is plainly to be seen at sea, but is invisible on shore; and the place being so steep that no person can be posed to inhabit there, they will needs have the fire to be miraculous, but as we sailed to this island in the day time, I can neither deny nor confirm their assertion. On the 23d we left the isle of Patmos to the Westward, and the next day passed by abundance of little islands, most of them uninhabited, and all of them so inconsiderable as not to deserve any particular notice.The 24th we were becalmed off the island called Lango by the Turks, Stanchio by the Greeks, and anciently Cos Coos.

The island affords a pleasant prospect as we approach it, being for the most part a fine level country, but rising gradually into hills towards the East, from whence several little streams fall into the plain, and render it exceeding fruitful. It is about eighty miles in circumference lying twelve miles distant from the South West part of the continent of Natolia; and has one large town in it of the same name with the island, which has a good harbor defended by a castle. The Turkish galleys frequently lie in this port, and their shipping often touch here in their passage from Constantinople to Egypt. The country abounds with the cyprus and turpentine-tree,† and is furnished with variety of plants that

*M. Thevenot says he saw this light, and considered it attentively for the space of an hour, it appearing to be about two hundred paces from the sea side, and rising and falling like a candle, and in short, he believes it to be miraculous: but M. Tournefort, not quite so superstitious as his countryman, says he is persuaded of the contrary; and supposing that any such fire was ever perceived, he doubts not but it was kindled either by the monks or shepherds, partly to divert themselves, and partly to keep up the belief of the great miracle, as it is called by the priests of the island.

†M. Thevenot tells us of a tree in this island, whose branches spread to such a vast distance from its trunk, that two thousand men might easily stand under its shade. He says its boughs were supported by props of timber and pillars of stone, there being several barbers' shops, coffee houses, and such like places underneath it, with a great many seats and benches. He adds, that the tree was like a sycamore,

are valuable for their medicinal virtues: and as for the wines of Coos, we find them famous in antiquity.* The present inhabitants are most of them Greeks, as in the other islands of the Archipelago, except the Turkish garrison of the town and castle.

As our vessel lay off this island, the sight of it naturally brought to our meinory some of those eminent men to whom it formerly gave birth, who have rendered their names immortal, and done honor to their profession and to their native country.— At the head of these stands that prince of physicians Hippocrates, whose superior abilities so established his reputation, that both ancients and moderns are unanimous in giving him his just applause. In the time of this great man a pestilence made terri- · ble devastation in several parts of the world, which is said to have begun in Ethiopia, from thence to have passed into Lybia and Egypt, then to have invaded Judea, Phoenicia, Syria, and the whole Persian empire, and lastly to have spread itself into Greece, and broke in upon Athens like a raging torrent. Thucydides, who was seized with that distemper, but recovered, and afterwards freely visited many others that were afflicted with it, has described very minutely the several circumstances and symptoms that attended it; in order, as he himself says, that a faithful and exact account of that calamity might serve as an instruction to posterity, in case the like should ever happen again. Lucretius has also given us a poetical description of it; and Hippocrates, who was employed in visiting the sick, has written of it as a physician.

This pestilence baffled the utmost efforts of art, and the most

but bore fruit like a chestnut. As to the truth of this account, I leave it to the reader's judgment.

*The wines of this island were reckoned loosening and purgative by the ancients, as appears from that passage of Horace,

-Si dura morabitur alvus,

Mitulus et viles pellent obstantia conchæ,

Et lapathi brevis herba; sed albo non fin Coo.--Sat. IV. Lib. II.

and upon the same account they are called lubrica, that is alvum solventia by the Persians. Sat. V. 135.

robust constitutions were not able to withstand its attacks; in a word, it swept away vast numbers at Athens, and amongst the rest Pericles, one of the greatest men that city ever produced; who, while he lived, was the main stay and support of the Athenian republic, and who perhaps, is the only one of whom it can be said, that he maintained himself in full credit for forty years together in a popular government. He acted, as an excellent historian observes, with so much wisdom, moderation, disinterestedness and zeal for the public good; he discovered, in all things, so great a superiority of talents, and gave so exalted an idea of his experience, capacity, and integrity, that he acquired the confidence of all the Athenians, and fixed in his own favor, during the long time he was in power, their natural fickleness and inconstancy. He suppressed that jealousy, which an extreme fondness for liberty had made them entertain against all citizens distinguished by their merit and authority; and the most surprising circumstance is, he gained this great ascendant merely by persuasion, without employing force, low artifices, or any of those little shifts which a mean politician excuses in himself, upon the specious pretence that the necessity of public affairs and reasons of state makes them necessary. But to come to what relates to Hippocrates.

The plague, as has been hinted already, had made grievous havoc in Persia, before it spread itself into Attica, upon which occasion Artaxerxes, the Persian monarch, who had heard of the vast reputation of Hippocrates, caused him to be invited by letters to come into his dominions, in order to prescribe to those who were infected. The king made him the most advantageous offers, setting no bounds to his rewards on the side of interest, and, with regard to honors, promising to make him equal with the most considerable persons of his court. But all the tempting glitter of the Persian riches and dignities could not corrupt Hyppocrates, or stifle that hatred and aversion which the Grecians had entertained for the Persians, ever since, those Asiatics had invaded their country. The honest physician therefore sent this answer to his invitation, That he was free from either wants or

M

desires, that he owed all his cares to his fellow citizens and countrymen, and that he would not leave the Grecians in distress, to give his assistance to barbarians. Artaxerxes, enraged at this denial to the highest degree, sent to the city of Cos, the native place of Hippocrates, and where he then resided, commanding the inhabitants to deliver him up, that he might be punished according to his insolence and perverseness; and threatening, in case of refusal, to demolish their city, and lay waste their whole island. The Coans, however, let this haughty monarch know, that the menaces of Darius and Xerxes had not been able to make them comply on another occasion, and that his threats should be equally impotent on the present: that, let the consequence be what it would, they would never give up their fellow citizen into his hands; and that they relied upon the gods for protection.

As Hippocrates had said that he owed himself entirely to his country, 30 the moment he was sent for to Athens he went thither accordingly, and continued there while the plague raged with the greatest fury: nor did he leave the city till it was quite free from that distemper. He devoted himself entirely to the service of the sick, and sent several of his disciples into the infected parts of the country, after he had instructed them in what manner to treat their patients. The Athenians affected with the deepest sense of gratitude for the generous care and attendance of this great physician, ordained by a public decree, that he should be initiated in the most exalted mysteries, in the same manner as Hercules the son of Jupiter; that a crown of gold should be presented him; and that the decree by which it was granted should be read aloud by an herald at the Panathenæa,* a solemn festival

*This festival was first instituted by Erichthonius or Orpheus, and called simply Athenæa; but was renewed and enlarged by Theseus, when he had united the several towns of Attica into one city, and then called Panathenæa, or the feast of all the Athenians. At first it continued only one day, but afterwards was prolonged several days, and celebrated with greater preparations and magnificence than was usual in the primitive times. There were two solemnities of this name, the great and the little; the former of which was kept once in