“On Tuesday, a Turkish brig of war ran on shore.  On Wednesday, great preparations being made to attack her, though protected by her consorts[1], the Turks burned her and retired to Patras.  On Thursday a quarrel ensued between the Suliotes and the Frank guard at the arsenal:  a Swedish officer[2] was killed, and a Suliote severely wounded, and a general fight expected, and with some difficulty prevented.  On Friday, the officer was buried; and Captain Parry’s English artificers mutinied, under pretence that their lives are in danger, and are for quitting the country:—­they may.[3]

[Footnote 1:  “Early in the morning we prepared for our attack on the brig.  Lord Byron, notwithstanding his weakness, and an inflammation that threatened his eyes, was most anxious to be of our party; but the physicians would not suffer him to go.”—­COUNT GAMBA’S Narrative.

His Lordship had promised a reward for every Turk taken alive in the proposed attack on this vessel.]

[Footnote 2:  Captain Sasse, an officer esteemed as one of the best and bravest of the foreigners in the Greek service.  “This,” says Colonel Stanhope, in a letter, February 18th, to the Committee, “is a serious affair.  The Suliotes have no country, no home for their families; arrears of pay are owing to them; the people of Missolonghi hate and pay them exorbitantly.  Lord Byron, who was to have led them to Lepanto, is much shaken by his fit, and will probably be obliged to retire from Greece.  In short, all our hopes in this quarter are damped for the present.  I am not a little fearful, too, that these wild warriors will not forget the blood that has been spilt.  I this morning told Prince Mavrocordato and Lord Byron that they must come to some resolution about compelling the Suliotes to quit the place.”]

[Footnote 3:  This was a fresh, and, as may be conceived, serious disappointment to Lord Byron.  “The departure of these men,” says Count Gamba, “made us fear that our laboratory would come to nothing; for, if we tried to supply the place of the artificers with native Greeks, we should make but little progress.]

“On Saturday we had the smartest shock of an earthquake which I remember, (and I have felt thirty, slight or smart, at different periods; they are common in the Mediterranean,) and the whole army discharged their arms, upon the same principle that savages beat drums, or howl, during an eclipse of the moon:—­it was a rare scene altogether—­if you had but seen the English Johnnies, who had never been out of a cockney workshop before!—­or will again, if they can help it—­and on Sunday, we heard that the Vizier is come down to Larissa, with one hundred and odd thousand men.

“In coming here, I had two escapes, one from the Turks, (one of my vessels was taken, but afterwards released,) and the other from shipwreck.  We drove twice on the rocks near the Scrophes (islands near the coast).