elections.  The presence of the correspondent at the polling booths, all of which I visited in rapid succession through the day, completely deranged all the plans, and only at one place was there an attempt at illegal pressure, on which occasion one man was shot.  The chief of police at the place came to me from time to time, saying, “Have you seen anything illegal?” as if he were under orders to convince me that the law had been obeyed.  The result was that the Tricoupist candidate was elected, and he admitted to me that his election was due to my presence.  He had only had one man shot, the general plan of carrying the elections by violence having been abandoned in deference to public opinion in England, represented by the correspondent of the “Times.”

I decided to go to Volo as soon as the annexation was accomplished, and took letters of introduction to several leading citizens, amongst them one from Tricoupi.  The Christian portion of the town was, of course, in exultation, but an attempt at inspection of the Turkish quarter had to be abandoned precipitately before a demonstration of the Mussulman juvenility.  My visit had to be abbreviated, for the filthy khan which was the only place of entertainment for man and beast swarmed with bugs and mosquitoes; and, though the five letters I had were to the wealthiest persons in Volo, amongst them being the mayor, not one offered me hospitality when I told them the next day that I must return by the steamer that brought me, in default of a decent bed and eatable food; and, though they expressed polite regrets, they saw no alternative, and I took a return passage.  Hospitality in continental Greece has no traditions; and even in Athens, except from Greeks who had lived in England, I have never been asked to accept bed or bread, while in Crete and in the Peloponnesus there was always a more or less active competition as to who should give me both.  The stranger, who was in the classical days the messenger of the gods and received welcome as such, has degenerated to the position of the modern tramp.  The difference is, no doubt, due to the centuries of oppression and isolation in which the fragments of the race have lived, and in which they have suffered the intrusion of unwelcome elements amongst them, always overborne and finding no protector except their own cunning, and no friend save in their own religion.

A thought that comes up very often while one deals with the Greek in Hellenic lands, is the wonder at the tenacity of the religion of the Greek, surviving the hostility not only of the Turk, but of his fellow Christian of the rival creed.  No other nation has ever endured the hostile pressure on its religious fidelity which the Greeks have had to submit to since the fall of Constantinople.  The Venetians were even more cruel with the Greeks under their rule than the Turks have ever been, and the influence of the Papal See has always been exerted with the most inflexible persistence for the suppression of what in Rome is