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I once spent Christmas on a Russian steamer, jammed to her guards with lousy pilgrims bound for the Holy Land, in a tempest off the Syrian coast. On another memorable occasion I skirted the shores of Crete on a Greek schooner which was engaged in conveying from Canea to Candia a detachment of British recruits much the worse for rum.
Blair shook his head at my rallying him, as he said in his broad Scotch tongue, "Ah, but no man of us expected ever to see his wife and bairns again; that I can assure ye." We were again indebted to private courtesy for a trip from Syra to Canea, though the delay was long.
In five hours we reached Gonia, a monastery situated on the coast of the Gulf of Canea where we were most hospitably entertained, good fare and good beds; our party was very talkative on Greek affairs. There were among the party the Spakiote chiefs Vanilikeli and Chrisophopulos. 'The next morning we proceeded, and as it was raining heavily we were obliged to stop for two hours in a ruined house.
I spent the day at the little station where the cable was landed, which has apparently been first a Venetian monastery and then a Turkish mosque. A handsome young Bashibazouk guards it, and a still handsomer mountaineer is the servant; so I draw them and the monastery and the hill, till I'm black in the face with heat and come on board to hear the Canea cable is still bad. 'May 23.
After seventy-five years of peace, the war between Venice and the Turks recommenced in 1645. The latter transported an army of fifty-five thousand men, in three hundred and fifty vessels, to Candia, and gained possession of the important post of Canea before the republic thought of sending succor.
A party of the consuls and officers of the men-of-war in the port made a picnic at Meskla in August, and witnessed a fight between the Cretans and Zurba and the Turks at Lakus, in the course of watching which I had a shot fired at me from the Turkish trenches, which came so near that the lead of the bullet striking a rock at my side spattered me from head to foot, and as we returned to Canea we were surrounded by the insurgents at Theriso, having lost our road in the dark, and most of the party taken prisoners.
The pasha called for troops from Constantinople, though no violence had been even threatened, and several battalions of Turkish regulars with eight thousand Egyptians arrived and disembarked. With one of the battalions was a dervish fanatic, carrying a green banner, who spread his praying carpet in every public place in Canea, preaching extermination of the infidels.
Many were killed, and Mussulmans coming in from the country reported groups of dead bodies in houses, in chapels where they had taken refuge, and by the roadside. The new Greek consul rode out to Galata, a village three miles from Canea, and counted seven dead bodies naked by the roadside.
Leaving Cerigotto, an island out of the line of traditional or historic interest, but, curious for its fine and extensive Pelasgic remains, we laid our course for Crete, starting with the breeze that at nightfall generally blows towards the land, which was visible from where we took our departure, and counted on being at Canea with the morning.
I had made an appeal to the commander of our man-of-war on the station to see us back to my post, but received a curt and discourteous refusal. I am not much surprised when I remember some of the occupants of the consulates in those days. Returned to Canea, I found that the Cretan assembly had begun its deliberations at Omalos.
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