LITMIR.BIZ

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and fireships to join him. Not till the afternoon of the 20th, by which time he had pursued his allies to a distance eighty miles from Alexandria, was he able to bring them into any sort of order, and then the bitter conviction was forced upon him that further prosecution of his plan, for the present at any rate, was useless.

      The scanty store of provisions that had been sent with the fleet, moreover, was nearly exhausted, and thus a new difficulty arose. Lord Cochrane sent the most useless of his vessels back to Poros for a fresh supply, and with an earnest entreaty that some efficient reinforcements might also be forwarded to him, announcing his intention of waiting in the neighbourhood in hopes of achieving some better success. "Your excellencies may rest assured," he said in his letter to the Government, "that our visit to Alexandria will have a powerful effect in paralysing the equipment of an expedition, and I have every reason to conclude that the example made before their eyes of the brig-of-war will deter any of the numerous neutral vessels from engaging as transports in the expedition equipping by the Pasha. The sensation created must indeed have been powerful as two neutral vessels of war made the signal for pilots before we weighed anchor on the morning of the 17th, under the impression, no doubt, that a more effectual attack would shortly be attempted. I am going to make a short tour, with a view, as far as I am enabled with the inadequate means at my disposal, to distract and paralyse the enemy."

      In accordance with that purpose, being already near Cyprus, Lord Cochrane conducted his fleet a little further north, and anchored, on the 23rd of June, off Phineka, in Asia Minor, where, after a brief fight with the Turks, he effected a landing, and received some much-needed food and water. Thence he addressed letters, urging the prompt despatch of the necessary stores and vessels, to the Government, to the primates of Hydra, and to Dr. Gosse.

      From this halting-place, also, he sent a noteworthy letter to Mahomet Ali, the Pasha of Egypt, a supplement to one which he had addressed to him nearly a year before, when he was on his way to enter the service of the Greeks.

      "Your employing foreigners in your military and naval service," he had said in the former letter, which will be best quoted in this place, "the privilege which you claim and exercise of building and equipping ships-of-war in neutral states, and of purchasing steam-vessels and hiring transports under neutral flags, for hostile purposes, and to transport to slavery a people whom the Ottoman arms have never yet been able wholly to subdue, warrant a belief, whatever your sentiments may be, that the civilized, educated, and liberal portion of mankind will be gratified that succours similar to those which you, unfortunately, have hitherto obtained from these states are now about to be afforded to the brave, the oppressed, and suffering Greeks. Nor will the advantage derived be wholly theirs; for, until you shall cease or be forced to abandon your inhuman traffic in Christian slaves and the commission of cruelties which stain the character of man, your subjects must inevitably continue barbarians, – a state from which it would be a source of great gratification to contribute to release them. It is true that the Christian world has not of late contended in arms with those of your faith on points of religion. It has, however, not fallen into a state of apathy so great as to see unheeded the perpetration of those enormities which you are daily committing on Christians, – a sentiment with which no feeling of animosity towards you or towards your people is combined. On the contrary, it desires to render you every good service consistent with that duty paramount to all others, namely, to wipe out the stain from the civilized world of unfeelingly and inhumanly co-operating to exterminate, enslave, and transport to bondage a whole Christian people – and such a people – the descendants of those Greeks whose genius laid the chief foundation of literature, the sciences, and the arts; who reared those noble monuments and edifices which time and the more destructive barbarian hand have yet failed to destroy, and which, compared with the wretched hovels of your hordes, may better point out to you the elevation they attained, and the prostrate state in which your people are – owing, alas! to the baneful effects of bigotry and despotic sway. Surely, surely there is ample field for the exercise of your energies at home, in encouraging industry, the arts and sciences, in promoting the civilization of your people, and in enacting equitable laws for the security of persons and property – on which bases the national prosperity of all countries must rest. But should your ambition, not content with bestowing blessings like these on your native land, lead you to soar almost above mortal acts, distant oceans would unite, and the extremities of the globe approach at your command.9 Thus might your name be rendered immortal, and Egypt become again the emporium of commerce, and one of the richest and happiest nations upon earth. How infinitely great the glory from such acts! How despicable the fame of a tyrant conqueror, the ruler of slaves! It would be pleasing to support you as the author of great and good works, but it is shameful to permit your present proceedings, and dastardly to leave the unfeeling apostate sons of neutral and Christian nations unopposed, aiding to perpetuate barbarism for horrid gain, drawn from the price of Christians torn from their homes and sold as slaves in foreign lands. Against these atrocious men, my companions and myself, casting the gauntlet down, will contend, in the hope that they and you may perceive your true interests and your great error, and pursue a different course before it shall be too late. Quit the classic sacred soil of Greece, let the flayings, and burnings, and impalings of that people cease, and oh! shocking to humanity, the ripping up of pregnant women, and the hewing up of their infant babes, and other acts yet worse than these – too horrid to relate. Release the Christian slaves; pursue an honourable and enlightened path, and we become friends to aid you in your pursuits – but should the present course be continued, let the bands of cruel assassins in your employ count on our opposition; count, too, on our neutralizing the effects of every vessel procured or bought from Christian states. 'Hear the voice of the Lord, ye rulers,' in the prophecy now to be fulfilled. 'Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help and stay.' 'When the Lord shall stretch out his hand, both he that helpeth shall fall, and he that is holpen shall fall down, and they shall all fall together.' Instead of filling brim full the cup of bitterness, of which you yourself must ultimately drink, how admirably might you not employ your people, and your treasure – the waste whereof is rearing to you a barbarian successor to prolong the bondage of Egypt. The Christian prayer of those called to rescue their suffering brethren is that, conforming yourself to the dictates of reason and humanity, you may live long to benefit mankind; and as you are more enlightened than your predecessors, so may you become more humane and just."

      The second letter was more brief. "The discrimination of your Highness," Lord Cochrane now wrote, "enables you to judge between those who offer advice to promote personal objects and those who disinterestedly desire the welfare of mankind. Egypt may become great by the attention of her rulers to her internal concerns, but not by war and foreign conquest, and assuredly not by the conquest of that people with whom your Highness is now engaged in hostilities, not only on account of the impossibility of reducing them to subjection but because the whole of Europe is directly or indirectly engaged in their support. I beg your Highness to be assured that, if I present myself to your consideration in a more conspicuous point of view than others, it is only because the habits of my life have enabled me to be openly instrumental in the protection of a Christian people whom you attack, and not because I feel animosity against your Highness, nor because I desire the overthrow of the lawful power of your Highness. Should your Highness, however, listen to interested counsellors, or to those who hope to gain by adulation, and continue the present unjust and sanguinary contest, I take leave once more to warn you that the first visit I have had the honour of paying you shall not be the last, and that it is not in the power of your Highness to prevent the destruction of your ships destined for the invasion of Greece, nor to defeat my intention to block up the port of Alexandria. I had the honour to address your Highness twelve months ago; but have thought proper to repeat once more the honest advice I then expressed, in order that your Highness may acquit me when, in the hour of adversity, you have to regret that you have not listened to the voice of truth."

      Lord Cochrane's threats could not be enforced. Off the coast of Asia Minor and among the southern islands of the Archipelago he waited for more than a week. But no adequate reinforcements or supplies of provisions arrived. The disorganised fleet became more and more unmanageable. One vessel after another deserted, and those that remained in nominal attendance on the flag-ship could not be brought under control. Lord Cochrane, who had made skilful sailors and brave warriors of enervated Chilians and Brazilians, found the Greeks utterly unmanageable.

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