Woman's Voice Never Heard Here

(Click the picture for bigger view)

1920

On Mount Athos, the "Holy Mountain of Greece," no females, human or animal, may ever tread. On top of the mountain are located twenty monasteries which house 3,000 monks and as many laymen. These buildings date back more than a thousand years and contain many valuable religious works. The monks have a sort of republic there and have preserved their independence and ceremonies thru three centuries of Moslem rule.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 11.

Russian Pilgrims Dip in Jordan's Stream

1905

Jerusalem itself has so much of interest for the traveler that we had spent a week there before we felt an inclination to look beyond its immediate vicinity and go down to Jericho.

Probably no trip of the length of all the excursions about Jerusalem surpasses in interest this short one to the shores of the Dead Sea, for in it are combined the most diverse attractions. One sees the Jericho road, famous since the story of the Good Samaritan: the sites of the Jerichos of Joshua and of Jesus, where Zacchaeus, the chief publican, climbed into the branches of the sycamore tree to see the Lord pass by; the ford of Jordan, where the Israelites passed over against Jericho, and where tradition places the baptism of Jesus by John; and the Dead Sea, unique among bodies of water in its combination of the sterile saltness of its waters and their extraordinary depression below the level of the sea. There is another feature of the excursion, the Wady Kelt, the "Brook Cherith" of the Old Testament, where the prophet Elijah hid in a cave and was fed by ravens when fleeing for his life from Jezebel.

The immediate occasion of our going down to Jericho, however, was the news that a great number of Russian pilgrims would, the following day, celebrate the Greek Epiphany by baptizing themselves, to the number of 2,000, in the Jordan river, while the Patriarch of the Jordan blessed the waters, thus commemorating the baptism of Jesus, which a more than doubtful tradition places at this fold of the Jordan instead of farther north. A great deal of interest in this sight was felt in Jerusalem, and when we made up our party and began to inquire for a carriage we found that every comfortable conveyance in the city was already spoken for, and that we would be lucky to get any vehicle at all.

Along the Jericho Road

It was therefore a rather stiff and rusty old fourposter into which we bundled, early the next morning, for our twenty-mile drive down the Jericho road. The morning was cool and the day, which looked undecided when we left the Jaffa gate and turned the northwest angle of the city wall, soon cleared finely. We turned again at the northeast angle, "the Stork's Tower," descended into the Kedron valley, passed the Mount of Olives, and began to wind in among the brown hills toward Bethany. The road was good, one of the few roads in Palestine, where paths are the usual and almost the only thoroughfares.

We passed Bethany, and found our first halting place at Khan-Hadrur, a little solitary khan by the wayside, where Jerusalem drivers stop to feed their horses. It was 9 o'clock, and while the horses were being fed we inspected the cave which does duty as the Inn of the Good Samaritan, who seems to have emerged from the parable into real life. Half an hour farther on we passed close to the Wady Kelt, sometimes identified with Elijah's Brook Cherith, and we left the carriage to scramble over the rocks into the barren gorge. Far below us, on the other side, we could see the white walls of a strangely Italian monastery, hanging over the abyss in what seemed a very precarious fashion. It was the Monastery of St. George, the only building in the gorge, but not the only dwelling, for the steep, rocky walls of the Wady were honeycombed with the caves of hermits of the past and present, and their ladders could in some places be seen hanging straight down the face of the cliff, before the mouths of their rocky dens. Except for the little garden of the convent, and a slender thread of verdure along the little brook at the bottom of the gorge all that one could see was waste and barren, the sides of the valley descending, treeless and arid, steeply to the slender stream that murmured along, far below us.

In the Jordan Valley

Rejoining the carriage we proceeded and soon rolled out into the broad plain into which the Jordan valley widens at the head of the Dead sea. The so-called Fountain of Elijah, a copious spring near Jericho, together with the waters of Jordan, are amply sufficient to water and develop this whole plain, as, indeed, they were made to do in ancient times. But Turkish authority so persistently discourages enterprise of every sort that nothing of this kind is dreamed of now, and the river and the spring send their waters idly into the Dead sea, almost unvexed by any irrigating appliances.

From every point of view the Dead sea is interesting. Hereabouts lay the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, whose overthrow makes so striking a picture in Old Testament annals. The Arabs still call the sea "Bahr Lut," the Sea of Lot, after the patriarch, who, tempted by the rich pasturage of this then smiling valley, "pitched his tent toward Sodom." Here, also as far as ancient records can vouch for, is the tomb of Rachel.

We hastened away to the Jordan fords, where the ceremony of blessing the waters and the self-immersion of the Russian pilgrims were to take place. In perhaps an hour we reached the spot, a low, muddy space beside the river, with some groves of small trees near by. The pilgrims were already assembled, to the number of some two thousand, and were engaged in putting on coarse slips or shifts of white cloth. For this purpose some, but not all of them, withdrew to the bushes. Some neglected the use of the slips, and altogether it was an extraordinary scene. A certain dignity, however, attached to the scene, disgusting as some of the features of it undoubtedly were, for these rude peasants, in their coarse boots and rough clothing, were sturdy men and women, with the marks of toil and hardship written plainly on their faces; and they were deeply, quietly in earnest about this Jordan baptism, to undergo which they had come thousands of miles, and endured not a little hardship and privation. They had all walked from Jerusalem, a distance of over twenty miles, and they were all to walk back thither, the following days.

Ceremony of Baptism

The Bishop of the Jordan was in the midst of a sort of preliminary service in a little open air chapel near the river bank, and a great crowd surrounded it. But the most of the pilgrims were gathered along the bank of the river, which here makes one of its numerous bends.

The waters were a muddy brown, and as they ran swiftly along between their mud banks they were anything but inviting. The pilgrims never gave the matter a thought, however; in sober silence they helped each other in with their white slips, and then awaited the appearance of the Bishop. He appeared at length and two boats received him, in his ecclesiastical robes, with the striking headdress characteristic of the clergy of the Greek church, and the Greek and Russian consuls, with their ladies. These last, in their European gowns, struck the only note of fashion in that strange assembly. No other boats were about; a swimmer now and then braved the strong current of the turbid river, and crossed and recrossed the narrow stream.

The two boats were now in midstream; the bishop rose and blessed the waters, flinging into them a golden cross, and all the waiting peasants rushed in. Three times they plunged their heads beneath the muddy waters, then fell to filling the flasks and bottles they had brought with them, to take back to their distant homes. The slips worn on these occasions are carefully preserved by their wearers to serve as grave clothes when their possessors die, and some extra suits we saw dipped in the water, evidently for friends at home who had been unable to make the pilgrimage.

The river bank was not a pleasant place when, ten minutes later, these 2,000 dripping pilgrims were crowding their way up it, and changing their clothes, and we were glad to make the best of our way out of it and drive to the little town of Eriha, and our hotel.

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?