As regards sight-seeing for sight-seeing's sake, it was _nil_. And for a
reason which seemed not to allow for any of the travellers having
discretion, "We make it a tacit rule never to go ten yards to see
anything; for if once we became sight-seers it is impossible to draw the
line. So in fact I see nothing but what I cannot help seeing."

The next diary-tic letter is not until 14th January of the next year
(1831), when the party had arrived at Aleppo.

Frank Newman had been studying Greek and talking it with a master, and
during the voyage from Marseilles landed for three days at Larnica. On the
ship was an old Greek, and he used to go and talk with him to practise his
Greek.

"You may be amused to hear his judgment of my Greek dialect; he called it
'very beautiful and very funny'; that is, no doubt, because I am apt to
mix up too much of the old Greek, which seems grandiloquent on trifling
subjects....

"Walking in the street at Larnica, I met a person whom I did not know,
who, to my extreme surprise, fell on my neck and kissed both cheeks quite
affectionately, I had not recognized my dirty acquaintance in this clean,
well-dressed gentleman, probably fresh from the bath."

Many were the difficulties Newman and his friends had to encounter in
hiring a vessel to sail to Ladakia [Footnote: Laodicea of Syria.] on the
opposite coast. At last a bargain was struck with a Turkish ship for five
pounds. But the ship had battled already against the contretemps of too
many voyages. She could no longer beat against the wind as once she used
to do. Four times they set sail, and four times had to put back again into