ssi, the European castle of the Dardanelles, I
found that there was no inn or hotel in the place; but it appeared that
the British consul, who lived on the top of the hill two miles off, had
built a new house in the town for purposes of business, and upon the
payment of a perquisite to the Jew who acted as his factotum, I was
presently installed in the new house, which, as houses go in this
country, was clean and good, but not a scrap of furniture was there in
it, not even a pipkin or a casserole--it was as empty as any house could
be. I sent my man out into the bazaar and we got some cabobs and yaourt
and salad, and various flaps of bread, and managed so far pretty well,
and then we went to the port, and after much waste of time and breath I
engaged a curious-looking boat belonging to a Turk, who by the by was
the only Turkish sailor I ever had anything to do with, as the seamen
are generally Greeks; and then I returned to my house to sleep, for we
were not to set out on our voyage till sunrise the next morning. The
sleeping was a more difficult affair than the dinner, for after the beds
at the embassy the boards did seem supernaturally hard; but I spread all
my property on the floor, and lying down on it flat on my back, out of
compassion to my hips, I got through the night at last.

All men were up and about in the Turkish town of Coom Calessi as soon as
the sun tinged the hills of Olympus, and the gay boat in which I was to
sail was bounding up and down on the bright transparent waves by the
sandy shore. The long-bearded captain sat on a half deck with the tiller
under his arm; he neither moved nor said a word when I came on board,
and before the god of day arose in his splendour over the famous plains
of Troy my little boat was spreading its white wings before the morning
wind. Every moment more and more lovely scenes opened to my delighted
eyes among the rocky and classic islands of the Archipelago. How fair
and beautiful is every part of that most favoured land! how fresh the
breezes on that poetic sea! how magnificent the great precipices of the
rocky island of Samotraki seemed as they loomed through the decreasing
distance in the morning sun! But no words, no painting can describe this
glorious region.

I had hired my grave sailors to take me to Lemnos, but the wind did not
serve, so we steered for Imbros, where we arrived in the afternoon. My
boat was an original-looking vessel to an English eye, with a high b