do you complain?" replied the crafty emir. "I have brought you to a land
flowing with milk and honey. Here is your true country; repose from your
toils, and forget the barren place of your nativity." "And our wives and
children?" "Your beauteous captives will supply the place of your
wives, and in their embraces you will soon become the fathers of a new
progeny." The first habitation was their camp, with a ditch and rampart,
in the Bay of Suda; but an apostate monk led them to a more desirable
position in the eastern parts; and the name of Candax, their fortress
and colony, has been extended to the whole island, under the corrupt
and modern appellation of Candia. The hundred cities of the age of
Minos were diminished to thirty; and of these, only one, most probably
Cydonia, had courage to retain the substance of freedom and the
profession of Christianity. The Saracens of Crete soon repaired the loss
of their navy; and the timbers of Mount Ida were launched into the
main. During a hostile period of one hundred and thirty-eight years,
the princes of Constantinople attacked these licentious corsairs with
fruitless curses and ineffectual arms.

[Footnote 79: The authors from whom I have learned the most of the
ancient and modern state of Crete, are Belon, (Observations, &c., c.
3-20, Paris, 1555,) Tournefort, (Voyage du Levant, tom. i. lettre ii.
et iii.,) and Meursius, (Creta, in his works, tom. iii. p. 343-544.)
Although Crete is styled by Homer, by Dionysius, I cannot conceive
that mountainous island to surpass, or even to equal, in fertility the
greater part of Spain.]

[Footnote 80: The most authentic and circumstantial intelligence is
obtained from the four books of the Continuation of Theophanes, compiled
by the pen or the command of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, with the Life
of his father Basil, the Macedonian, (Scriptores post Theophanem, p.
1-162, a Francisc. Combefis, Paris, 1685.) The loss of Crete and Sicily
is related, l. ii. p. 46-52. To these we may add the secondary evidence
of Joseph Genesius, (l. ii. p. 21, Venet. 1733,) George Cedrenus,
(Compend. p. 506-508,) and John Scylitzes Curopalata, (apud Baron.
Annal. Eccles. A.D. 827, No. 24, &c.) But the modern Greeks are such
notorious plagiaries, that I should only quote a plurality of names.]

[Footnote 81: Renaudot (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 251-256, 268-270) had
described the ravages of the Andalusian Arabs in Egypt, but has forgot
to connect them with t