e in and landed their long-legged, white-uniformed troops,
who perhaps bivouacked that night on the shores of the bay, and the next
day were absorbed in the great reticulations of the mountain-island,
which must have seemed a strange country indeed to the Fellah recruits,
to whom the Mokattam Hills were mountains.

_We_ could do nothing in Crete. We were closely bound down by orders,
and sympathies had no play. Hundreds of women and children, the
families of the insurgents, were interned at Retimo in an old fort and
in other similar strongholds. Some were hovering about the south coast,
not far from St. Paul's Fair Havens, in hopes of being taken off from
there. The condition of these people was very pitiable. The Russian
frigate General Admiral had taken one load of them to Greece, but the
pacha in command, Mustapha Kiritli, positively refused to allow us or
the Russians to take any more. The blockade-runners (one of which, at
least, had distinguished herself in our own then recent war) took off a
few, but could not, of course, stay on the coast long enough to
accomplish much without having a Turkish cruiser down upon them. As a
war-measure the refusal of the pacha was right, for the possession of
the women and children gave the Turks a certain hold upon the Cretans
who were bushwhacking in the mountains.

The pacha did give us permission to go down to Retimo to see for
ourselves the condition of the families detained there. They were not so
badly off, according to Levantine notions. They had lentils, oil, flour
and firewood, a shelter for their heads, and their rugs and rags to
sleep under. The Turkish officers asked, What more could people want?
What they wanted was the Turks out of the island for ever, but it was of
no use to say that. Such a remark on our part might have been thought
personal.

Sometimes during our stay we went over to the town of Canea, where the
only things of interest were--first, a red-hot consul, who sympathized
so violently with the Cretans that he had lost all his influence with
the Turks, to whom, of course, he was accredited; and, secondly, the
fine old Venetian slips and galley-houses, in such preservation as
almost to make one fancy that the days of Francesco Prioli, the admiral,
had not yet departed.

At Suda Bay there was a large Turkish camp, which was interesting for an
hour or two. About its outskirts it had a curious collection of
half-savage camp-followers and hangers-on, the