Kalepa, a suburb where most
of the foreign consuls reside in summer, with many of the wealthier
Khaniotes, and the only place in the vicinity where the summer can be
passed in comfort. A few houses are fitted with European improvements,
but the greater part are the simple and cheerless residences of the
Cretan peasant, furnished with the merest necessities of existence. Even
here, in the most prosperous of the villages I have been in, life is,
for most of the people, only a struggle against poverty, thrift being
impossible where every surplus meets a new impost. Many houses are still
in ruins from the devastations of 1821-1830, showing how incompletely
the island had recovered from that war before being plunged into another
more destructive still. From the ravages of this, however, Kalepa is
saved so far,--thanks to a few consular residents,--but saved alone of
all the villages of the plain country.

If it be true that civilization is determined by natural advantages, it
must be that Cydonia was the "mother of cities," at least of all the
Hellenic realm, for no more enchanting or tempting site have I ever
known through travel or description. With its climate of paradisiacal
softness and healthfulness, and the beauty of its framing hills,--fanned
in summer by the north winds from the AEgean and by south winds tempered
by the snows of the Aspravouna,--with a winter in which vegetation never
ceases and frost never comes,--with its garden-like plain and its
old-time river, and its port unexceptionable in ancient times,--nothing
was wanting to render prosperity and security complete in former days,
as nothing but freedom is wanting now to restore both, and make the city
the most attractive place in the classical world. Hitherto, its charms
have but tempted invasion, and its fertility has only grown harvests for
the sword. Here began the Cretan conquest by Metellus; here began the
movements which, one after the other, have shaken the Ottoman chain only
to make it heavier; and here began the latest struggle, which, so long
and gallantly upheld, may finally bring back to Crete the civilization
born on her shores, but for so many centuries an exile.

II.

THE AKROTERI.

Not to make one's first excursion from Canea to the Akroteri, with its
convent of the Hagia Triada (Holy Trinity), and its sacred Grotto of St.
John, would be _lesa maesta_ to the Khaniotes, who regard a pilgrimage
to the latter as entitling one to a Hadji