Departure from Alexandria.

September 7th.

At eight o’clock in the morning I betook myself on board the French steam-packet Eurotas, a beautiful large vessel of 160-horse power.  At nine o’clock we weighed anchor.

The weather was very unfavourable.  Though it did not rain, we continually had contrary winds, and the sea generally ran high.  In consequence we did not sight the island of Candia until the evening of the third day, four-and-twenty hours later than we should have done under ordinary circumstances.

Two women, who came on board as passengers to Syra, were so violently attacked by sea-sickness, that they left the deck a few hours after we got under way, and did not reappear until they landed at Syra.  A very useful arrangement on board the French vessel is the engagement of a female attendant, whose assistance sometimes becomes very necessary.  Heaven be praised, I had not much to fear from the attacks of sea-sickness.  The weather must be very bad—­as, for instance, during our passage through the Black Sea—­before my health is affected, and even then I recover rapidly.  During our whole voyage, even when the weather was wretched, I remained continually on deck, so that during the day-time I could not miss seeing even the smallest islet.  On

September 10th,

late in the evening, we discovered the island of Candia or Crete, and the next morning we were pretty close to it.  We could, however, distinguish nothing but bare unfruitful mountains, the tallest among which, my namesake Mount Ida, does not look more fertile than the rest.  On the right loomed the island of Scarpanto.  We soon left it in our wake, and also passed the Brothers’ Islands, and many others, some of them small and uninhabited, besides separate colossal rocks, towering majestically into the sea.  Soon afterwards we passed the islands Santorin and Anaph.

The latter of these islands is peculiarly beautiful.  In the foreground a village lies at the foot of a high mountain, with its peak surmounted by a little church.  On the side towards the sea this rock shoots downwards so perpendicularly, that we might fancy it had been cut off with a saw.

Since we had come in sight of Candia, we had not been sailing on the high seas.  Scarcely did one island vanish from our view, before it was replaced by another.  On

September 11th,

between three and four in the morning, we reached Syra.  The terrible contrary winds with which we had been obliged to contend during almost the whole of our passage had caused us to arrive a day behind our time, to make up for which delay we only stayed half a day here, instead of a day and a half.  This was a matter of indifference to those of us who were travelling further, for as we came from Egypt, we should not have been allowed in any case to disembark.  Those who landed here proceeded at once to the quarantine-house.