on the sensorium in the same manner as the ecstatic vision I have
recorded of my wood-life. I suppose such beauty to be incompatible
with any degree of mental activity or personal character, for the
process of mental development carries with it a trace of struggle
destructive to the supreme serenity and statuesque repose of the
Cretan beauty. Pashley tells of a similar experience he had in the
mountains of Sphakia, and he was impressed as I was.

On our arrival at the city gates, returning to Retimo, we had an
experience of the mediaeval ways of the island, finding the gates
locked and no guard on duty. We called and summoned,--for a consul had
always the privilege of having the gates opened to him at any hour of
day or night,--but in vain, until I devised a summons louder than our
sticks on the gate, and, taking the hugest stone I could lift, threw
it with all my force repeatedly at the gate, and so aroused the guard,
who went to the governor and got the keys, which were kept under his
pillow. The next day we had an affair with Turkish justice which
illustrates the position of the consuls in Turkey so well that I tell
it fully. The dragoman and I had gone off to shoot rock-pigeons in
one of the caves by the seashore, leaving at home my breech-loading
hunting rifle, then a novelty in that part of the world. When we got
home at night the city was full of a report that some one in our
house had shot a Turkish boy through the body. I at once made an
investigation and found that the facts were that a boy coming to the
town, at a distance of about half a mile from the gate, had been hit
by a rifle ball which had struck him in the chest and gone out at the
back. No one had heard a shot, and the sentinel at our doors, set
nominally for honor, but really to watch the house, had not heard any
sound. The boy was in no danger, and he declared that the bullet had
struck him in the back and gone out by the chest. My Canea dragoman,