Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3CHAPTER IV. SMYKNA. At five o'clock the next morning, the 29th, all the old noise began again — the same frightful riot, clanking of chains, bawling and stamping overhead, that appeared necessary to move the steamer — in the middle of which they shut down our hatchway, and threw a tarpaulin over it, which brought me from my berth in an instant. I found we had taken in several deck passengers — chiefly Greeks. An Albanian family had encamped in the flat-boat upon deck. There was a young man and his wife, her brother, a very old woman, and a baby; and they had made a perfect nest of bedding, carpets, and baggage, in which they all huddled. There was a look of extreme misery and broken spirit about these poor people that was excessively painful. They did not appear to have anything more than a melon or two, and some coarse bread, for their stores; and they drank the tepid water from a tub on deck. Our little milliners took the baby under their care in the cabin, for which the mother — a mere girl herself—was most grateful. The conveyance was effected entirely by pantomime, for each was ignorant of the other's language, and very prettily it was done. The family was bound to Smyrna, to pack figs—a wretched employment enough, I should imagine, but one which appeared to be worth the migration. The girl's head was dressed in the manner I had seen most prevalent at Athens. First, she wore the common scarlet skull-cap, bound round with a yellow handkerchief. Over this, again, her long black hair was wound, neatly plaited; and about it, but irregularly, were hung a few trifling coins, with holes bored in them. The effect altogether was novel and graceful. Our course lay amongst many islands, none of them striking; and, indeed, some were bare stony hills, rising at once from tho sea. We could only read to g...