see line 1623) a
"giant shape."]

[207] {249} [Coron, or Corone, the ancient Colonides, is situated a
little to the north of a promontory, Point Lividia, on the western shore
of the Gulf of Kalamata, or Coron, or Messenia.

Antoine Louis Castellan (1772-1838), with whose larger work on Turkey
Byron professed himself familiar (Letter to Moore, August 28, 1813),
gives a vivid description of Coron and the bey's palace in his _Lettres
sur la Moree, etc_. (first published, Paris, 1808), 3 vols., 1820.
Whether Byron had or had not consulted the "Letters," the following
passages may help to illustrate the scene:--

"La chaine caverneuse du Taygete s'eleve en face de Coron, a
l'autre extremite du golfe" (iii. 181).

"Nous avons aussi ete faire une visite au bey, qui nous a permis de
parcourir la citadelle" (p. 187).

"Le bey fait a executer en notre presence une danse singuliere,
qu'on peut nommer danse pantomime" (p. 189; see line 642).

"La maison est assez bien distribuee et proprement meublee a la
maniere des Turcs. La principale piece est grande, ornee d'une
boisserie ciselee sur les dessins arabesques, et meme marquetee.
Les fenetres donnent sur le jardin ... les volets sont
ordinairement fermes, dans le milieu de la journee, et le jour ne
penetre alors qu'a travers des ouvertures pratiquees, au dessus des
fenetres et garnis de vitraux colores" (p. 200).

Castellan saw the palace and bay illuminated (p. 203).]

[208] {250} Coffee.

[209] "Chibouque" [chibuk], pipe.

[210] {251} Dancing girls. [Compare _The Waltz_, line 127, _Poetical
Works_, 1898, i. 492, note 1.]

[211] It has been observed, that Conrad's entering disguised as a spy is
out of nature. Perhaps so. I find something not unlike it in
history.--"Anxious to explore with his own eyes the state of the
Vandals, Majorian ventured, after disguising the colour of his hair, to
visit Carthage in the character of his own ambassador; and Genseric was
afterwards mortified by the discovery, that he had entertained and
dismissed the Emperor of the Romans. Such an anecdote may be rejected as
an improbable fiction; but it is a fiction which would not have been
imagined unless in the life of a hero."--See Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_
[1854, iv. 272.]

[212] {252} [On the coast of Asia Minor, twenty-one miles south of
Smyrna.]

[213] [A Levantine bark--"a kind of ketch without top-gallant sail, or