apple the Cretan meadows.

The northern side of the palace was finished with another portico,
and in this part of the building there came to light a series of
miniature frescoes, valuable, not only as works of art, but as
contemporary documents for the appearance, dress, and surroundings
of the mysterious people to whom this great building was once home.
Here were groups of ladies with the conventional white complexion
given by the Minoan artists to their womankind, wonderfully bedizened
with costumes resembling far more closely the evening dress of our own
day than the stately robes of classic Greece with their severe lines.
In their very low-necked dresses, with puffed sleeves, excessively
slender waists, and flounced skirts, and their hair elaborately
dressed and curled, they were as far as possible removed from our
ideas of Ariadne and her maids of honour, and might almost have
stepped out of a modern fashion-plate. 'Mais,' exclaimed a French
savant, on his first view of them, 'Mais ce sont des Parisiennes.'
These fine Court ladies were seated, or perhaps rather squatted,
according to the curious Minoan custom, in groups, conversing in
the courts and gardens, and on the balconies of a splendid building.
In the spaces beyond were groups of men, of the same reddish-brown
complexion as the Cup-bearer, wearing loin-cloths and footgear with
puttees halfway up the leg, their long black hair done up into a
crest on the crown of the head. In one group alone thirty men appear
close to a fortified post; in another, youths are hurling javelins
against a besieged city. 'The alternating succession of subjects
in these miniature frescoes suggests the contrasted episodes of
Achilles' shield. It may be that we have here parts of a continuous
historic piece; in any case these unique illustrations of great
crowds of men and women within the walls of towns and palaces supply
a new and striking commentary on the familiar passage of Homer
describing the ancient populousness of the Cretan cities.'[*] Only
the wonderful tomb paintings of ancient Egypt can excel these vivid
miniatures in bringing before us the life of a bygone civilization;
nothing else to approach them has come down from antiquity.

[Footnote *: _Monthly Review_, March, 1901, p. 126.]

The main entrance of the palace seemingly lay on the north side,
where the road from the harbour, three and a half miles distant, ran
up to the gates. Here was the one and only trace of