Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Crete. At sunset on the day after our return from Tenos The Cretan (March 22) we embarked on board the Austrian se"' steamer, which runs weekly between Syra and Crete, the Lloyd's being the only line which keeps up communication with that island. The German name of our vessel, the Schild, and that of her sister- steamer, the Wicn, looked strange in the midst of Greek and Italian titles, and sounded still more out of place in the mouths of our Greek boatmen. We were due at Khanea, the capital of the island, which lies on the northern coast, not far from its western extremity, at noon the following day, but the badness of the weather caused us to be five hours late, and gave us ample opportunity of justifying the truth of the old Greek proverb, 'the Cretan sea is wide1.' Late in the afternoon we passed the promontory of Acroteri, which forms the eastern boundary of the bay of Khanea, and an hour later were lying off the port. For some time it was doubtful whether we could enter, for the narrow entrance has been so silted up, in consequence of long neglect, that the 1 FIoAv To KprlriKov ireayos. passage is often dangerous in bad weather; the other alternative would have been to land at Suda, on the further side of the Acroteri peninsula ; fortunately, however, we succeeded in passing the bar. No sooner had we cast anchor than we were first surrounded and then boarded by a motley crowd of noisy Cretans in picturesque dresses, interspersed with Nubians, many of which race have been settled in the island ever since the time when it was subject to the Viceroy of Egypt (a. D. 1830-1840). The appearance of the town was striking, as its irregular wooden buildings rose up the hill sides from the sea, interspersed with palm-trees, mosques, and minarets. There was no mi...