The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1928-05-18

League of Youth, vowed under papal
sanction to poverty and chastity, to
the Succor of pilgrims, and to the de-
Tense of the Holy Sepulcher. Through
out Europe the order spread it's reli-
gious-military appeal, recruiting celeb
rites and attracting wealth.
Captured by the Turks.
Four times, under the knights,
Rhodes stood siege. When the Turks
made their second attack, they ar
rived with 100 ships and 10000 men,
employed lighted arrows and floating
bridges and prepared eight thousand
stakes for impaling the defenders.
They lost one-third of their army
But in 1922, six hundred knights and
mere handful of soldiers, after main
tanning an unparalleled defense of the
stronghold for six months against a
fleet of 300 ships and nearly a quar-
ter of million Turks, capitulated On
honorable terms.
Rhodes today presents the aspect
of a huge medieval fortress whose
keeps, magazines-yes, its very dun
geons-have been remodeled into
quaint shops and dwellings.
At the call of the food peddler.
housewives let down baskets on strings
from upper windows where the
knights prisoners once peered forth
from behind bars. The town pasture
lies within the ramparts which once
inelosed the grand masters palace,
and here sheep nibble among mounds
of the stone cannon balls which were
flung into the city by Turkish bonn
bards.
Sponges from Kos are piled in the
knights parade ground; acres of
vegetable gardens. making green the
once-grim meats, spring from the
mingled dust of Christian and intidel
who fell there, while around the mas
sive barbicans, slit with crucifCrm
loopholes, cluster masses of pome-
granate and oleander blossoms.
Here and there, against the ever
present background of brown forti-
fcations, rise lancelike minarets. liz
cobbled courtyards are RhOdian wom-
en- at their washbOards, men at car
penter's or cObbler's bench, dark
eyed children shouldering water jugs
the picture being framed by some mas
sive buttress connecting two medieval:
hospices. Yonder is a housewife pre-
pairing the MONDAY spaghetti inside
Gothic doorway over which is
carved row of knightly shields.
The wOmen'S street costume in
cludes a curious black bonnet with
two long, black ribbons streaming
down behind. The men go about in
scarlet-and-gold waistcoats and in
baggy trousers whose sacklike seat
hangs almost to the heels of their
Rh0dian boots.
Golden brown, under a turquoise
sky, lies the Street of the Knights
where the spittings of many gargoyles
have worn a trench along the stone.
pavement.
Street of the Grand Reviews.
In the street, on the eve of some
expected siege, grand review took
pace. Genoese and Venetian merce-
naries, clad i'm purple, green, and gold,
swung past the grand master, shout
ing for the kingdom of Christ and for
their respective republics. The mail
clad knights, in red surcoats bearing
+ the Maltese cross, curvetted their
paving chargers under the fiuttering
banners of the Eight Tongues, and
red roses, the flower for which Rhodes
was named, were thrown by fair
hands from balconies hung with
Turkey carpets and Flanders tapes
tries. =
Past the grand master, too, were
borne the orders holy relics; the
right hand of it's patron, John the
Baptist, "a yearly budding fragment
of the Crown of ThOrns, a copper
cross made of the bowl from which
the Savior washed His apostles feet.
One is inclined to think of King Ar
thurs knights and Of their quest of
the Holy Grail.
OF all humiliations, 1t was Christ
mas day, 1922, which beheld the yell
ing thrush of loot-maddened Turks.
A week later de PIsle dAdam and
his shattered knights evacuated.
being bout | for the barren island of
Malta.
One way Of orienting Rhodes geo.
graphically is to describe it as the
largest of the Dodecanese islands. 1t
is the most eastward of the great
group of isles and islets that peppers
the Aegean sea. Farther eastward in
the Mediterranean lie only tiny coast
al islets, like KastelOrizO, and the one
big island, Cyprus. Of all the is
lands east of the Grecian peninsula
only Cyprus and Crete exceed Rhodes
in size.