Where Adam Lives, But Eve is Excluded

1915

The Monastery of St. Peter

Where the white cowled peakhead of Mount Athos rises into the serene turquoise sky and looks down its slopes, solemnly verdured by dark forests and gardened by olive, myrtle and rose, is the most remarkable republic in all the world, into whose arcadian confines came, again the call of war — the world's greatest of wars.

This dominion, at all times on a military footing to repel its one great, human enemy, has passed through many wars with pirate invaders, not to mention the invasion of curiosity of the Byzantine empress, who insisted upon visiting the place to the mortification and scandal of the good men — so there is small wonder that Father Bulatovitch, once a grim soldier, volunteered to go forth and fight for the czar.

Mount Athos is on the peninsula of Saloniki, which territory Greece wrested from the Turks in the last war, says the Louisville Courier-Journal. There are twenty monasteries in the republic, eleven villages and 250 hermitages. The population is composed of more than three thousand monks and as many lay brothers, who are classed as "worldlings." There is an army of fifty Albanian guards stationed at the capital, Karyas, to see that no woman enters. And so rigid is the bar against the weaker sex that not even the female of any animal may be admitted.

In a Romantic Garden Spot

Think of this garden spot, where, despite the iron impress of celibacy, there are romance and poetry in the very air! There is mystery, too, for, looking from the sea, the cloak of the dense forest that lies over the titanic shoulders of the holy mount is full of blue and black shadow and silence; then, grimly medieval, clinging to the side of the elevation, even in the bright sunlight losing none of its impressive character, is the "mysterious monastery" of Simon Peter.

Mount Athos might have still drowsed in the serenity of its recent dream picture days had not Father Bulatovitch, who at one time held a commission in the army of the great white czar, been stirred by the martial spirit and declared his willingness go to war. He had been an officer of the guards and as abbot of a monastery brought something of the military discipline there.

He made it clear he did not intend giving up his religious orders, but, in imitation of the crusading monks at the time of the Tartar invasion in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, would head his troops with his uniform covered by his priestly vestments. He may be fighting now, or he may have been mustered in at last for the long twilight march.

But even the monks who have been trained in the paths of peace are not unfamiliar with war. They have it as an inspiring tradition, for all of these monasteries in the beginning were armed forts to repel the invasion of pirates. The Russian monastery, four hours by muleback from the capital, is the best example of this defensive style.

Mount Athos a Place of Thrills

"As you approach," tells a recent visitor, "you are impressed and bewildered by that strange fortress sanctuary, with its bristling array of bastions, towers, turrets, redans and parapets, all stained, riddled and crenellated by the action of time and tempest. As far as the eye can see there is no opening anywhere along the whole expanse of walls. Wooden galleries project beneath the roof, but they are of comparatively recent construction, having been added since the pirates ceased to harry the holy mountain. They are painted a defiant wood red. The whole mass of masonry clings acrobatic-like to a rock, which is covered with luxuriant verdure."

In this curious republic there are Russian monks and Greek monks and Servian monks and Bulgarian monks. Though peaceful in general effect, Mount Athos has been a place of thrills. Not long ago the Bulgarians made an effort to seize the Servian monastery Hilendar and annex it for their own monks. The matter caused intense indignation in Belgrade, and, was adjusted with some difficulty by the governing council of monks at Karyas.

For these men, rugged through long years of clean living and wholesome work, are of the stuff of ancient conquerors, despite the transforming spirit of the church. It would be interesting to know just how diffuse among them is the old crusading spirit as shown by the action of Father Bulatovitch, who believes he will be fighting for a holy cause.

Karyas an Eveless Eden

The Saloniki steamer puts into the small port of Daphne, but even though a woman landed there in disguise and was not discovered, she could not consider herself really in the forbidden precincts of the Eveless Eden. The envied objective is Karyas, the capital, on the eastern slope of the mountain, a gem of a settlement, almost hidden among gardens and olive yards, a scattered mosaic on a field of green. And yet in this garden there is no note of the appealing cadences of a woman's voice, no sound of childish laughter, not one touch that would tell of the presence of Eve.

That there may be no invasion, the army of fifty Albanian guards watch night and day. Women have endeavored by various ruses to enter, but invariably have been discovered and turned back. But who was the Byzantine empress to whom the chronicler refers who insisted upon the forbidden visit and who lived to regret it? You naturally settle upon Theodora, the wife of Justinian, who, having been at one time a performer in the circus and much given to adventure, is likely to have undertaken such an exploit simply because it was forbidden.

A story is told, also, of an American girl student in Greece who essayed it, and nearly succeeded, but for the cleverness of a monk who was endowed with some of the subtle craft of Sherlock Holmes. She went about to prepare for the adventure with painstaking deliberation. She practiced for days walking after the real masculine style, assisted by the young man who was to accompany her on the mission. She could smoke a cigarette like a man; but considering this as not being absolutely convincing, she mastered the cigar, and then, with a heroic effort, conquered the pipe.

American Girl's Exploit

Her voice was a deep contralto, and when she was at last ready for the adventure she was as perfect a young man as one would expect to see out for travel and instruction. The party landed at Daphne without the disguise being discovered.

On arriving at Karyas one reports to the prefect, who is in charge of the Albanian guard. One of these soldier monks watched the proceedings with keen interest. There was nothing in the manner of the disguised girl to excite suspicion — she was playing her part to perfection — but this fierce looking soldier cleric must have received some subtle intuition that the enemy was at hand.

Preferring to be absolutely certain, he said nothing while the routine was being gone through. But, as the party was about to go out into the single street of the capital he suddenly pointed to the floor and exclaimed in perfect English:

"Be careful, please!"

The girl instinctively made a motion, as though to gather up her skirt had she been wearing one. That motion discovered her. She was escorted back to the little seaport with less pomp than is due to an empress.

Wars may sweep the earth with fire and steel, and women bear the bitterest penalties of the loss, while they rise to the supremest heights of heroism and self-sacrifice — being angel to friend and foe alike; but there, at Mount Athos, she can have no part either in its peace or its peaceful wars. For she is the enemy, the insidious foe urged to invasion by the most powerful of feminine motives — curiosity.

Against her the army of the guard and the army of the isolated faithful are unceasingly on guard. And we, who are in the high fever of life, in the full consciousness of what misery, suffering and crime such an obvious thing as sex may encompass — who of us can say, with anything of verity, that these earnest men of Athos are not entirely and supremely happy in their Eveless Eden?