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Updated: May 6, 2025
It was most gratifying to me that A'ali Pasha recognized my good faith and comprehension of the position, for not only did he, before he left the island, give me distinctly to understand that he considered me a friend, but told the Turkish minister in Athens, Photiades Pasha, that the government of Constantinople had been greatly deceived regarding me, and that if they had taken my advice in the beginning they would have avoided their difficulties.
But it must be admitted that the Cretan was always the most refractory of subjects, and, though at the time of this visit the island had obtained the fundamental concessions which it had fought for, in the recognition of its autonomy with a governor of the faith of the majority, in a later visit in 1886 I found it ravaged by a sectional war of vendetta, Christian against Christian, in which, as Photiades Pasha assured me, in one year 600 people had been killed and 25,000 olive-trees destroyed in village feuds.
After more than one letter from Photiades, assuring me in unqualified terms that I might confidently count on the reception of the firman, I received a communication from the minister at Constantinople, that on the advice of Photiades Pasha the firman was refused.
The weather having abated, we ran over to Crete, where I found the island laboring with reforms, a constitution, and a Christian governor, in the person of my old friend Photiades Pasha.
Photiades Pasha, an amiable and very intelligent man, recognized the dominant fact of his position to be the necessity of keeping the favor of the Mussulman oligarchy at the capital, and he could not offend the Mussulmans of the island by even a maintenance of equal justice between the two religions.
In despair I went to the Turkish minister Photiades Pasha and told him of the promise of A'ali Pasha to pay me for my time and expenses while waiting at Constantinople, asking him to remind the pasha that I had not been paid, as he probably supposed, possibly through the dishonesty of the messenger.
A'ali made inquiry, and, finding it to be the case, sent me, through Photiades, a hundred Turkish pounds, with which I was enabled to pay all local debts and reach London, more grateful to the Turkish sense of justice than to that of my own government.
We found that excavation was a matter beyond achievement with the limited funds at my disposal, but Photiades was munificent in promises of support if I wished to return for serious undertaking in that direction. In the following winter I was accordingly requested to take charge, for the American Archaeological Institute, of an expedition for research and if possible for excavation.
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