him were equally vicious.  The man, when we saddled up the first day out, put the saddle on so loosely that as we mounted the first steep rocky slope the saddle slipped over the horse’s tail, carrying me with it, and the horse walked over me, breaking a rib and bruising me severely, and then tried to kick my brains out.  I remounted and kept on, but that night the pain of the broken rib was such, and the fever so high, that I was obliged to give up the journey and go back to Canea.  I found that the pasha had anticipated a disaster, and heard of it with great satisfaction.

As soon as restored, I set out on a trip to the central district of Retimo, then perfectly tranquil, the agitation in Sphakia, which preceded the great insurrection, having already begun, and making my venturing there imprudent.  I was anxious to see something of the provincial government of the island, as, in Canea, where the foreign consuls resided, there was always the slight check of publicity on the arbitrariness of the official, though what we saw did not indicate a very effective one.  I had a dragoman in Retimo, a well-to-do merchant, who served for the honor and protection the post gave him, and his house was mine pro tem., and over it, during my stay, floated the flag of the consulate.  We made an excursion across the island to the convent of Preveli, situated in one of the most beautiful valleys in the island, sheltered on the north, east, and west by hills, and lying, like a theatre, open to the south, and looking off on the African sea.  The entrance was by a narrow gorge, and here we witnessed one of those natural phenomena that still impress an ignorant people with the awe from which, in more ancient times, religion received its most potent sanction.  The wind passing through some orifice in the cliff far above our heads, even when we felt none below, produced a mysterious organ-like sound, which the people regarded as due to some supernatural influence.  As all the modern sanctuaries in that part of the world are founded on the ruins of ancient shrines, I have no doubt that our hospitable shelter of that night was on the site of some temple to one of the great gods of Crete.

That journey gave me a sight of one of the remarkable Cretan women, whose reputation for beauty I had always regarded, judging from the women in the cities, as a classical fable.  I had been making a visit to the mudir of the province through which we were passing, and, after pipes and coffee, and the usual ceremonies, I mounted my horse, and, at the head of my escort, rode out of the mudir’s courtyard, when my eye was caught by the flutter of the robes of a woman in a garden across the road.  Around the garden ran a high hedge of cactus, and as I leaned forward in my saddle to look through one of the openings, a girl’s face presented itself to me at the other side of it, and we stared each other in the eyes for several seconds before she—­a Mussulman girl—­remembered that she must not be seen,