Syra to run over by a sailing-boat, so I went to Syra. But no boat
would go to Crete, because the quarantine on the return was not merely
rigorous but merciless, and exaggerate to an incredible severity. No
boat or steamer was admitted to enter the port coming from any Turkish
or Egyptian port, though with a perfectly clean bill of health, and
all ships must make their quarantine at the uninhabited island
of Delos. Such was the panic that no one would venture to carry
provisions to that island while there was a ship in quarantine, and
during the fortnight I waited at Syra an English steamer without
passengers, and with a clean bill of health, having finished her term,
was condemned to make another term of two weeks, because a steamer had
come in with refugees from Alexandria, and had anchored in the same
roadstead. Mr. Lloyd, the English consul, protested and insisted on
the steamer being released, and the people threatened to burn his
house over his head if he persisted; but, as he did persist, the ship
was finally permitted to communicate with Syra, but not to enter the
harbor, and was obliged to leave without discharging or taking cargo,
after being a month in quarantine.

At last an English gentleman named Rogers, who lived at Syra, an
ex-officer of the English army, offered to carry me over to Canea
on his yacht of twelve tons, and take the consequences. I found the
consulate, like the position in Rome, deserted, the late consul having
been a Confederate who had gone home to enlist, I suppose, for he
had been gone a long time, and the archives did not exist. There was
nothing to take over but a flag, which the vice-consul, a Smyrniote
Greek, and an honest one, as I was glad to find, but who knew nothing
of the business of a consul, had been hoisting on all fête days for
two or three years, waiting for a consul to come. I was received with
great festivity by my protégés, the family of the vice-consul, and