XXXVII. THE BLOCKADE OF GREECE

XXXVIII. CRISPI--A SECRET-SERVICE MISSION--MONTENEGRO REVISITED

XXXIX. ITALIAN POLITICS

XL. ADOWAH AND ITS CONSEQUENCES





CHAPTER XX

CONSULAR LIFE IN CRETE


Cholera was raging all over the Levant, and there was no direct
communication with any Turkish port without passing through
quarantine. In the uncertainty as to getting to my new post by
any route, I decided to leave my wife and boy at Rome, with a
newcomer,--our Lisa, then two or three months old,--and go on an
exploring excursion. Providing myself with a photographic apparatus, I
took steamer at Civita Vecchia for Peiraeus. Arrived at Athens I found
that no regular communication with any Turkish port was possible, and
that the steamers to Crete had been withdrawn, though there had not
been, either at that or at any previous time, a case of cholera in
Crete; but such was the panic prevailing in Greece that absolute
non-intercourse with the island and the Turkish empire had been
insisted on by the population. People thought I might get a chance at