My first leave of absence from Crete had been for two months, afterward extended indefinitely on account of the health of the family, the extension being accompanied with the intimation that my salary would be suspended after a date indicated, unless I returned to Crete.  The Cretan committee of Boston, to whom I had, according to our agreement, sent my claim for the excess of expenses over my income,—­the excess amounting after the realization of all my private resources, sale of my curiosities, etc., to about $1500, for which I was indebted to Mr. Lockwood,—­replied that the funds of the committee were exhausted, and there was nothing to meet my claim.  As I had given my leisure in Crete to the practice of photography and was provided with everything necessary to correct architectural work, I set about photographing the ruins of Athens, which I found had never been treated intelligently by the local photographers, and from the sale of the photographs I realized what sufficed, with a sum of 1200 francs accorded us by the Athens Cretan committee from the remainder of the funds in hand when the insurrection collapsed, to meet immediate contingencies.  I was in hope that the new cabinet, in which I had a warm personal friend in Judge Hoar, General Grant’s attorney-general, would assign me another post, knowing that the Turkish government was so bitterly opposed to my remaining in Crete; but the new Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, was a friend of General King, my discomfited superior at Rome, and he had persistently urged my dismissal as demanded by the Sultan, though, owing to Hoar’s opposition in the cabinet this had not been accorded.  But I was never forgiven by the friends of King, and one day, when Judge Hoar was absent from a cabinet meeting, Fish succeeded in getting my successor at Crete appointed, and though the judge made an indignant remonstrance at the next meeting, it was too late to help us, for Fish obstinately opposed my having any other appointment, and, as he controlled all nominations to consular posts, it was impossible for the judge to effect anything.

My troubles came to a crisis in the sudden death of my wife.  The anxiety and mental distress of our Cretan life, and her passionate sympathy with the suffering Cretans, even more than our privations and personal danger, had long been producing their effect on her mind, and the weaning of the baby precipitated the change into a profound melancholy, which became insanity accompanied by religious delusions from which she sought refuge in a voluntary death.  She was given a public funeral, and the government sent a caisson to carry the coffin to the grave, but the Cretans claimed the right to take charge of it, and the coffin was carried to the cemetery on the shoulders of the oldest chiefs.  The Cretan women looked on her as their best friend, and always spoke of her after her death as “the Blessed “—­their form of canonization, for even in Athens they had