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My nerves were somewhat calmer, but in my excited brain I saw over again all my existence on board the Nautilus; every incident, either happy or unfortunate, which had happened since my disappearance from the Abraham Lincoln the submarine hunt, the Torres Straits, the savages of Papua, the running ashore, the coral cemetery, the passage of Suez, the Island of Santorin, the Cretan diver, Vigo Bay, Atlantis, the iceberg, the South Pole, the imprisonment in the ice, the fight among the poulps, the storm in the Gulf Stream, the Avenger, and the horrible scene of the vessel sunk with all her crew.
We once visited the island of Santorin, which has a population of 9000 souls, who own 46 vessels of 200 tons and upwards, besides many smaller craft. King Otho was sailing about in one steamer at the time, and another was acting the man-of-war amidst a fleet of English, French, Prussian, and Austrian frigates in the front of the Piraeus; yet no post had been forwarded to Santorin for a fortnight.
Vases found at Santorin. With these vases were found some troughs for holding crushed grain, and lava discs very much like those still in use among the weavers of the Archipelago to stretch the woof of their tissues; skilfully graduated lava weights, the correlation of which is very evident, as they weigh 8, 24, and 96 ounces; a flint arrow-head and a saw of the same material with regular teeth; together with a great variety of other objects, including many obsidian arrows and knives, reminding us in their shape of those characteristic of the Stone age in North Europe.
Let us endeavor to guess at the period when the people of Santorin lived. De Longperier tells us that vases similar to those left by them are represented on the tomb of Rekmara amongst the presents offered to Thothmes III., who lived in the eighth century B.C., but if so the people of Santorin appear to have borrowed nothing in their intercourse with Egypt.
The AEgean Sea has ever been the theatre of igneous phenomena, and the three little islands of Thera, Therasia, and Aspronisi, which shut in the Bay of Santorin, are built up chiefly of volcanic materials.
"Why, these are the most archaic Greek letters which have yet been discovered: inscriptions from beneath the lava beds of Santorin." "I can't help that," I said. "The Polynesians used them too; and you see I can read them easily, though I don't know Greek."
As the nearest source of obsidian to Egypt that is known are the islands of Santorin and Melos in the Ægean Sea, there must have already been a maritime trade with the Greek seas. Art had already reached maturity; a small dog carved out of ivory and discovered in the tomb of Menes is equal to the best work of later days.
Now we know that Vesuvius was built up by means of successive eruptions taking place under the air; and the question arises whether it could be possible that Santorin had a similar origin owing to the waters of the Mediterranean having been temporally lowered at a later Tertiary epoch.
The absence of clay in the island of Santorin has thrown some doubt on this, however, but the researches of M. Fouque have revealed the former existence of a large valley, at the base of the principal cone, which valley ran down to the sea-shore near the island of Aspronisi; and in which probably was found the clay which the potters of the district soon learned to turn to account.
The usual color of the keramic ware is black, some times decorated with white lozenge-shaped ornaments. Some vases have also been found colored red, yellow, and brown, and even decked with garlands of flower and fruit, as are some of those of Santorin.
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