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Updated: May 10, 2025
Most of the houses around us at Kalepa were occupied as hospitals, and the very air seemed infected by the number of sick; there were 3000 in and around Canea. In this condition the year 1867 went out and the third year of the insurrection began.
The irregulars, proud of their new rifles, were firing in every direction, and one heard balls whistling through the air, falling on the roofs. On one occasion, when my wife, with other ladies of the consular circle, was walking between Canea and Kalepa, some of the Mussulmans amused themselves by firing as near their heads as it was safe to do.
My children, for months, did not pass the threshold, though Laura insisted on showing her indifference to the danger by walking out; and one night when some mischievous Mussulmans started a cry of "Death to the Christians," in the streets of Kalepa, and the entire Christian population in a few minutes were at our doors, beating to be admitted, the cavasses refusing to open without orders, she had flown to the door in her night-dress and thrown it open to the crowd, who passed the rest of the night sitting on the floor of the consulate.
Around me had spontaneously formed an efficient service for information, the runners of the various sections coming to me at Kalepa with the earliest information on every event of importance, and I communicated with the legations at Athens and our own minister at Constantinople.
Arkadi was at least forty miles, as the roads go, from Kalepa, a long day's journey as travel goes there; but I received news of the fight soon after it began, and information of the progress of the combat during the day, one of my customary informants coming every few hours with the details.
This service I subsequently checked by the information given me by Mustapha's Cretan secretary, who lived in the house next to mine at Kalepa, and by the accounts given by some Italian officers of the Turkish and Egyptian regulars engaged in the siege for the final struggle, and found to be correct.
As far as the village of Kalepa, there is a carriage road; afterward, only a stony path. From the spinal ridge of the promontory, which we crossed, we overlooked all the plain of Khania, and beyond the Dictynnæan peninsula, to the western extremity of Crete.
The public slaughterhouses were midway between Canea and Kalepa, and there were always large flocks of ravens battening on the offal which was thrown out on the ground; but for weeks the ravens abandoned the place entirely, and the flocks were seen only hovering over certain localities on the great plain between Canea and the nearest hills.
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