lying, like a theatre, open to the south, and looking off on the
African sea. The entrance was by a narrow gorge, and here we witnessed
one of those natural phenomena that still impress an ignorant people
with the awe from which, in more ancient times, religion received its
most potent sanction. The wind passing through some orifice in the
cliff far above our heads, even when we felt none below, produced a
mysterious organ-like sound, which the people regarded as due to some
supernatural influence. As all the modern sanctuaries in that part of
the world are founded on the ruins of ancient shrines, I have no doubt
that our hospitable shelter of that night was on the site of some
temple to one of the great gods of Crete.

That journey gave me a sight of one of the remarkable Cretan women,
whose reputation for beauty I had always regarded, judging from the
women in the cities, as a classical fable. I had been making a visit
to the _mudir_ of the province through which we were passing, and,
after pipes and coffee, and the usual ceremonies, I mounted my horse,
and, at the head of my escort, rode out of the mudir's courtyard, when
my eye was caught by the flutter of the robes of a woman in a garden
across the road. Around the garden ran a high hedge of cactus, and as
I leaned forward in my saddle to look through one of the openings, a
girl's face presented itself to me at the other side of it, and we
stared each other in the eyes for several seconds before she--a
Mussulman girl--remembered that she must not be seen, when, wrapping
her veil around her head, she flew to the house. The vision was of
such a transcendent beauty as I had, and have since, never seen in
flesh and blood,--a mindless face, but of such exquisite proportion,
color, and sweetness of modeling, with eyes of such lustrous brown,
that I did not lose the vivid image of it, or the ecstatic impression
it produced, for several days; it seemed to be ineradicably impressed