VOL. I.] A Journal of Choice Reading, SELECTED FROM FOREIGN CURRENT LITERATURE. SATURDAY, MARCH 17, 1866. MY EXPERIENCE IN A GREEK QUAR- [No. 11. hope of being able to pass eleven days of idleness endurably, in the heat of midsummer, where the sun is as fervent as on the south side of a Greek HAVING occasion during the past summer to go island. The steamer was from Alexandria, with from one of the Turkish islands of the Mediter- over two hundred passengers on board, mostly Syranean over to European terra-firma, I was obliged riotes and other Greeks, flying from the cholera, to go to Syra, the entrepôt of the Levant, to take then in the beginning of its fury at that city; therepassage in the Austrian Lloyd's steamer; but as fore they were most naturally put into quarantine. the cholera panic and the restrictions laid on Their term was fourteen days, I believe, of which the steamers from all Turkish ports had virtually nearly a week had passed without any symptoms of stopped regular communication with Greek ports, sickness of any kind. We were near enough to I was obliged to borrow the yacht of an English hail across to her on still days and hear the comfriend who happened to be visiting us at the time. plaints of the captain roared at sympathetic ears in Our island had had no case of cholera, and indeed good broad English, and witness by eye and ear the had never been visited by it; its general healthful-facts I am about to narrate, which I challenge the ness was all that could be desired by the most ex- most patriotic and mendacious inhabitant of Syra acting board of health, and as, moreover, we were to contradict. fortified with English, Turkish, and Greek bills of health, I anticipated at the worst a detention of four or five days previous to being permitted to land. We had a charming run of thirty odd hours, with just wind enough to make a landsman love the sea, and sighting Syra in the morning, stood directly in for the port. Half a mile off the mole-head we met a man-of-war's boat, the Greek blue and white stripes flying out from the stern, and received a most peremptory warning to go no nearer, fearfully shouted from a safe distance; and on learning that we were from a Turkish port, the officer ordered us off to Delos for eleven days' quarantine, declining even to look at our bill of health, or hear any protest or explanations. Those who have been at Syra may remember to the west of that port, and about ten miles away, a low, bare, and rocky island, which few people ever visit, and on which only two or three herdsmen live. On closer inspection one finds that what seemed to be one is really two islands, the larger called sometimes Rhenée, and sometimes the greater Delos, the smaller the true Delos, site of the famous temple of Apollo. In a bay on the southeastern side of the former, the Sylph (I am sufficiently inexact in details, as I have occasionally to pass through Syra and don't care to have my identity discovered) cast anchor, and the so-called lazaretto being only an insignificant collection of huts, built of rough boards, I elected to perform quarantine on board, even at the cost of detaining the Sylph longer than her owner had calculated. In fact the bare, dry, even burnt look of the island, without a shrub, a spring, or a living thing on it except a few guardiani and some luckless passengers of an English steamer which had preceded us by a few days, gave small The captain of the steamer having, like myself, only calculated on a few days' observation, had provided himself with sufficient stores for the time for his few cabin passengers, the great bulk of those on board being deck passengers, who provide themselves with food for the voyage. These had been exhausted soon after their arrival at quarantine; and the captain, praying in vain for supplies from the authorities of Syra, began to furnish his ship's supplies; for it was impossible, as he said, to see the poor people starve. But these supplies, abundant for his proper ends, would go but a little way in feeding that hungry multitude, and were threatened with exhaustion before the towns-people should awaken their Christianity from its sleep of, I imagine, about seventeen centuries. The captain appealed in vain to them to save their countrymen from starvation. They were not bound, they said, to provide food for people because they found them in quarantine. So the captain gave out all his stores, little by little, and shouted across to me to know if I had any to spare. The Sylph carried a crew of twelve men, and we naturally had two or three barrels of hard bread and salt beef stowed away for emergencies; and though what we could give them, with proper regard to our own needs, could be little more than a few hours' respite from starvation, it was impossible to withhold it. The captain was an incarnate protest, a deckwalking imprecation on the miserly authorities of Syra. The people in his ship were not his own countrymen, but Greeks; he was under no obligation to provide a mouthful for one of them; they had no money to buy, and he had no authority to buy for them except from his own funds, - to have done which he must have been a Roman prince or an English banker. So he wrote, and begged, and protested. He wrote to the English consul, Mr. | have become a madness in the Greek mind. Our Lloyd, and Mr. Lloyd stormed at the nomarch and sailors gave the wretches the benefit of much good demarch by turns in vain. The Syriotes would not and strong English, which I fear was sadly wasted, send, and the consul could not,-save a little for and would have been equally so had it been equally the captain and crew; and provisions were not only good Greek; but I noticed that our guardiano was not supplied by the board of health, but permission stricken with fear at the bare idea of the vicinity of to carry them off was denied those who would have the infected ship. What the extent of the conta taken them, so great was the panic at the idea of gion was we knew not of course; but the hurrying communication with the ship. Mr. Lloyd succeeded and trepidation of the people on board, and in the now and then in sending a small supply by the boat which came alongside, made it evident that guarda-costa, and they bought now and then a kid something unusual was going on. The boat lay far of the herdsmen on the "clean" part of the island, at off, and the officers shouted very loudly; and we exorbitant rates. But they, too, finally refused to heard afterwards from the quarantine-boat that communicate; and then the captain wrote to the there were four or five dead of cholera on board, consul, I saw the letter afterwards, -"For three whom they wanted to send on shore to be buried, days my men have had no bread, and two of them but this was refused as dangerous! then to be perhave gone raving mad." Amongst the cabin pas-mitted to sink them in the sea, this was still less to sengers was a Frenchwoman, pregnant and near be allowed. They begged for a doctor, her confinement; for her the captain begged for a would go; guardiani even would not go on board doctor or nurse in vain, -none would venture; and for any compensation, and they rowed away, leavwhen the time was come the poor mother had only ing her to her fate. We shortly after received an the kindly care of the captain and her fellow-pas- intimation that by reason of this new arrival, all sengers, among whom was no woman or person com- ships in quarantine at that time must stay fourteen petent to care for her. Fortunately, she passed days more! through her trial safely. - In the mean while Mr. Lloyd kept up his protests and remonstrances to people and government; protested against the inhumanity and the illegality of the whole thing; begged for relief to deaf ears. "Better," they said, "that a few should suffer, than that forty thousand should incur the peril of cholera. To allow people to carry provisions to the island was to run danger of communication with contagion." The only reply of any significance that Mr. Lloyd got was a threat of burning his house over his head if he persisted in attempting to bring cholera into Syra. We, knowing nothing of this little turmoil, lay quietly under the intense sun waiting the lapse of time. The Greeks on the steamer might starve, but we were perhaps thankful that they were only Greeks; we should wear through well enough, and then be free. Mr. Lloyd finally wrote to Athens; the government at Athens ordered an examination; and then the demos, under compulsion, voted meagre supplies to their famished countrymen. But our fates were merciless. A few days, very few, before the steamer's time had expired, a ship arrived from Alexandria which actually had the cholera on board! Twenty or more had died and were thrown overboard on the voyage, as we afterwards learned, and several more were sick. As she came into the quarantine anchoring-ground and cast anchor, she dragged some distance, and seemed in a fair way to drift against the armed cutter which was doing duty as guarda-costa and capo-guardiano. The brave fellow I hope he wasn't a sailor- ran out his guns, and prepared to sink the ship and all on board, lest she should come into contact with him. That scene is one I shall never forget and hardly ever forgive: the huddled passengers driven on deck by the pestilence and heat, and doubtless already in a frenzy of fear from the perils within, found themselves met on the threshold of deliverance from their awful fellow-voyager by the open mouths of Greek carronades. Women shrieked and men howled with fright; all prayed, supplicating the gods and the captain; the guarda-costa people were in a worse panic, if possible, shouted orders and counter-orders, ran out a gun and ran it in again, threatened, prayed, and cursed, as though doom was on them. This horror of the cholera seemed to -- no one My own wrath at Greek inhumanity had been already so largely excited that I could get no angrier at this new tyranny; in fact, I thought more of the steamer and its already half-starved, and even in some cases dying, people than of myself; and if I had had the pestilence in the hollow of my hand, I should, I fear, have visited Syra as Egypt never was visited. But the most appalling thought was of that luckless ship with Death holding revel on her, and the living bound to the dead. Here was the ship of the ancient mariner, in sooth, anchored only, but with anchors almost useless on that tranquil sea, the fiery sun above, and the glassy water below, and nothing to break that awful monotony but the merciless quarantine-boat coming to ask and refuse. We could see the people on the ship gather on the forecastle and in the rigging, looking out to the land, which, brown and dry as it was, was to them a refuge. The second and the third day came, and the dead multiplied, until ten or a dozen corpses were on board. Still no physician, no landing, no burial even; and the plague-stricken ship and its dying cargo lay still under the August sun. The third day the crew received permission to put the bodies overboard, tied with ropes, that they might not drift away and carry to some accursed Greek community the plague merited. I may be unjust, but those days have made me detest and abhor the very name of Syra and its people. We saw the dead lowered overboard one by one, and with glasses could see them floating alongside, horrible to sight and fancy. I am only dealing with facts, - facts which will be confirmed by the testimony of many who passed those broiling August days in that quarantine. No physician could be found in Syra who had humanity enough to hear the cry of that suffering company, or venture on the plague-stricken ship. They did finally get permission to bury the dead, all but one mother and child, who drifted loose, and was cast on some unknown shore, or fed the fishes; and finally a Danish physician came, a volunteer from I regret to say I know not where, nor even do I know his name. I did not think then to enable myself to render him the honor he deserves; and finally the sick were landed. There had been a hundred and forty passengers on board when the ship left Alexandria, and there were over a hundred | figure, whom, by the aid of the glass, I believed I when she came to quarantine, the untouched remaining on board until they were attacked in their turn, and were carried ashore to die. Their provisions, too, were failing, and at last starvation came to help the pestilence. could make out to be her daughter. The latter made no sound that we could hear, but sat mutely or stood with her arm around the other, while ever and anon we heard that heart-rending cry, "Psomé! psomé! (bread! bread!)" At sunset that day we were altogether on the forecastle, better friends through our common pity. We proposed to our taciturn guardiano to send some bread on board the any such risk of contagion, and forbade any attempt to communicate either with the ship or the shore where the sick were; and to tell the truth, it was not pleasant to contemplate the chances of being put in quarantine for an additional indefinite term, for having, even in a kindly work, come in real or fancied contact with the disease. But as the authority of the guardiano was absolute, we could do nothing in the matter openly, though it was determined in council by us three to do something in some way, if relief was not brought soon. 66 I sought distraction and pastime amongst the sailors, of whom two had attracted my attention during the run over. One of them I judged to be an American at first sight, the incarnation of "go-ship, but he absolutely refused to lend himself to ahead" and nervous energy. I had seen him at the wheel the first day out, as I sat aft taking my fruit after dinner, and tempted him to affability by a huge slice of melon, which he ate without ever taking his eye for more than an instant from the course of the yacht. The next day they were apples that broke the silence; when, abruptly turning round to me, he asked if I was a freemason. He was, and evidently did not understand how one could treat a sailor with courtesy or kindness without some such motive as that mystic brotherhood is supposed to furnish. He wore a black wide-awake crowded From the forecastle next morning we saw in the close down to his eyes, which looked sharp out from early light the two hapless creatures in the same pounder black, clear-drawn eyebrows. His nose was sition. Bill, looking over into the water thoughtprominent, pointed, and straight, and his mouth full fully, asked if there were many sharks in those of decision; lips close-pressed, and chin small and waters. I replied that I had never seen but one, slightly retreating. He carried his head habitually inquiring why he asked. Why," said he, "I think a little forward, as if on the look-out, and reminded I could get some grub over to those women, if you me in his ensemble more of a clipper than anything could manage the guardiano." "It is n't much of a I ever saw in flesh. He was taciturn, however, and swim," I replied, "but as to carrying the prog, you absolutely refused to talk of himself. The other, will find that more difficult." Well," said he, "I who responded to the name of Bill, was certainly have carried a pretty good load in the water before one of the best examples of the English sailor I now, and can float enough to keep those women have ever met, robust, thick-set, with large brain from starving. I lived in the Sandwich Islands and full beard, a frank blue eye, and an off-hand once, and though I don't stand out of the water like manner familiar to all who permitted it, but respect-a Kanaka, I have carried my clothes on my head ful to the highest degree, and speaking the English many a mile without wetting them, and a few of a man who had had some education. In the first pounds of bread won't sink me." Here his eye days of our imprisonment he had surprised me not twinkled as if he had a story to tell, and I waited little by offering to lend me some old numbers of for it. "I commanded a lorcha transport during the reviews and magazines, written on the margins of last war in China," he began, after a moment," and which I found some shrewd comments, and with one day, while we were in Canton, I was walking some bits of drawing. I am not going to write his through one of the streets with my mate, an Engstory, and shall not repeat what I learned of a life lishman, and we stopped to look in a joss-house. ruined by an uncontrollable spirit of adventure and There was a joss there of pure silver, about fourteen unimproved opportunities; I have only to do with inches high, and I made up my mind to have him. him now as he wove himself into the web of our We two were the only Europeans on board, and the quarantine life. first dark, stormy night we took the boat and went It was from Bill that I learned what I first knew ashore well armed. The joss-house had no guard of Aleck; that he was, as I had supposed, an Amer- but the priests, and the night was so bad that we ican, had been in the Confederate service, and had broke the door down and got in without the outeven served on the Alabama. After finding out so siders knowing it, and carried the joss off easily much, I tried hard to make him talk about himself, enough; but the next day we had row enough to but in vain. He was respectful, but not communi- pay for it. Every vessel in the river was searched, cative on any subject, and least so on himself. But and if I had had him on board, he would have been the new excitement of the cholera-ship and its hor- found, and we should have caught it, for the officers rors made a certain difference. I certainly felt more were in earnest about it, and the Chinese in a fury. like getting near my fellow-men, and they, and espe- I knew there would be the d-1 to pay in the morncially Aleck, were more oblivious of the difference ing, so I put a cord around his neck, and went down between them and me. The immediate cause of the and hung him to the lower pintle of the rudder, and breaking of the ice was the sight of a poor woman left him there till the hue and cry was over, and standing on the poop of the cholera-ship as she then brought it up. It weighed forty-two pounds. drifted towards us from her anchorage, before a I think I could do more in this case than then." slight easterly air, that brought the woman's voice "Do it then," said I; "I'll help you all I can: but down to us in supplications which we could from we won't let the captain or any of the men know of time to time partially distinguish, and which were it!" "O, I'll put that all right," said Aleck; for bread, bread, bread! We could see others on "Jones has the first watch to-night, and I'll change board climbing on the bulwarks, standing on the with him, and as for the guardiano, he's a sleepy poop or forecastle, according to the end of the ship cuss, and I reckon won't give himself the trouble to which drifted nearest us; but we could hear no other look on deck after he turns in, he never has, any voice, though we doubted not that many were joined way; and if you'd like to keep watch with me, sir, with hers. Beside her we saw, later, another female | I think we can manage it." But, Bill," I added, a And so we arranged it that Bill should swim off to the ship as soon as it was dark, and trusting to fortune to get the provisions aboard without discovery, we were to hang overboard a light for him to swim back to. "look out for the guarda-costa: if they see anything | we were sent into Eastern Tennessee, where there in the water moving between the vessels, they'll was a good deal of bushwhacking about that time. fire at it, certainly." "That won't trouble me," re- We were picketed one day in a line about two miles plied the imperturbable tar. "I have run the long across country, and I was on the extreme blockade in the American war thirteen times, and left. I took my saddle off, holsters and all, and had bigger balls than that fellow can throw whiz-hung it on a branch of a peach-tree, and my carzing about my head, and fired by better gunners than bine on another. We knew there were no Yankees they have got aboard there. Why, sir, we ran al- near, and so I was kind o' off guard, eating peaches. most into one of their monitors one night, and had By and by I saw a young woman coming down to eight fifteen-inch shot fired at us without being hit, where I was, on horseback. She wanted to know and in all the thirteen trips in and out we never if there were many of the boys near, and if they were hit but once and then the ball only took off would buy some milk of her if she took it down to the head of the look-out forward." them. I said I thought they would, and took about a quart myself; and as she had n't much more, I emptied the water out of my canteen and took the rest. Says she, 'If you'll come up to the house yonder I've got something better than that: you may have some good peach-brandy, some of your fellows might like a little.' I said I'd go, and she says, You need n't take your saddle or carbine; it's just a step, and they are safe enough here, there's nobody about.' So I mounted bareback, and she led the way. When we passed the bars where she came in, she says, 'You ride on a step, and I'll get down and put up the bars. I went on, and as she came up behind, she says pretty sharp, 'Ride a little faster, if you please.' I looked round and she had a revolver pointed straight at my head, and I saw that she knew how to use it. I had left everything behind me like a fool, and had to give in and obey orders. That's the house, if you please,' she says, and showed me a house in the edge of the woods a quarter of a mile away. We got there, and she told me to get down and eat something, for she was going to give me a long ride, into the Yankee lines, about twenty miles away. Her father came out and abused me like a thief, and told me that he was going to have me sent into the Federal lines to be hung. It seems he had had a son hung the week before by some of the Confederates, and was going to have his revenge out of me. I ate pretty well, for I thought I might need it before I got any more, and then the old fellow began to curse me and abuse me like anything. He said he would shoot me on the spot if it was n't that he 'd rather have me hung; and instead of giving me my own horse, he took the worst one he had in his sta 6 "That ship reminds me," said Bill, after a long pause, "of a trip I made once in an English ship to Senegal. We went up the river to load, and while we lay there waiting for cargo to come down, we had one of the worst yellow-fevers break out on the ship I ever saw. The first man who was taken with it died in three hours, and that day two more were taken and died before dark, and in three days we lost all but seven of the crew one after the other, not one was sick more than six hours, and then the mate was taken sick. The first thing I knew of it was that he said to me, 'Bill, give me a good glass of grog, and fill my pipe; I want one good smoke and a drink before I die.' 'O, nonsense,' says I, 'you are no more likely to die than I am.' 'I know very well I have got it,' said he; and when I am dead, bury me deep enough so that the land-crabs can't dig me up. Sure enough he died that afternoon, and we took him ashore before night and buried him in a good deep grave. In two days more there were only the captain and I alive on the ship. And there we lay ten days till we heard that an English man-of-war was off the mouth of the river, and the captain sent a native boat down to ask him to send up men to work the ship out of the river. The man-of-war sent word that they would n't send men up the river, but if we could work her down with natives, they would give us men to get the ship home to England, and so we got out, but a deuse of a time we had of it getting down. I sup-bles, and they put me on that with my feet tied topose they feel on that ship pretty much as I did those ten days." gether under his belly. Luckily they did n't tie my hands, for they thought I had no arms, and could n't All day long we heard at intervals that pitiful help myself; but I always carried a small revolver cry, "Bread! bread!" faintly coming over the wa- in my shirt bosom. The girl kept too sharp watch ter. It was more tolerable than the day before, be-on me for me to use it. She never turned her recause we knew that relief would go with nightfall. volver from me, and I knew that the first suspicious And so, as the dark came, we made up a packet of move I made I was a dead man. We went about hard bread with a little cold meat and a bottle of ten miles in this way, when my old crow-bait gave wine, and binding it securely between Bill's shoul-out and would n't go any farther. She wouldn't ders, and with a pointed stick on top of it, in case, as he said, "a shark should want to take the prog from him," he slipped down into the water, stripped to his drawers, and struck out for the cholera-ship so quietly that you might have thought it a little school of guard-fish. trust me afoot, and so had to give up her own horse, but she kept the bridle in her own hands, and walked ahead with one eye turned back on me, and the revolver cocked with her finger on the trigger, so that I never had a chance to put my hand in my bosom. We finally came to a spring, and she asked We sat on the forecastle watching and waiting. me if I wanted to drink: I didn't feel much like I said nothing, and where two are together and one drinking, but I said yes, and so she let me down. I will not talk, the other sometimes will. Aleck final- put my head down to the water, and at the same ly broke silence with, - -"Women are mighty curi-time put my hand down where the revolver was, ous things. I'll bet that old one don't touch a and pulled it forward where I could put my hand mouthful till t'other has eaten, and I don't believe on it easily; but she was on the watch and I she would have made half the fuss she did if she had could n't pull it out. I mounted again, and the first been alone. In the beginning of the American war time she was off her guard a little, I fired and broke I belonged to a regiment of mounted riflemen, and | the arm she held the pistol in. 'Now,' says I, it's my turn you'll please get on that horse and we'll 66 and left everybody else to drown or to be picked up by the Kearsarge." 66 Time to show the light, I reckon," said Aleck, after his ebullition had subsided, and proceeded to put over the bows the light agreed on. An hour after Bill had started on his voyage, we heard his whistle from below the forechains, and, heaving him a line, brought him in cautiously. He slipped down to change his clothing and add to it, and then came up to render an account of his doings. He had, as he anticipated, found more difficulty in getting on board the ship than in getting to it. He had found the poor women on the quarter-deck, all order and ship-keeping abandoned, and no look-out anywhere. The passengers were sleeping on deck or sitting around it, moaning and weeping. He dared not call to the women for fear of disturbing the guardiani, and of attracting the attention of the other passengers to whom his small supply would have been but a mouthful. He swam round and "But," said I, rather disposed to work the vein round looking for a loose rope's-end in vain, and of communicativeness, but not anxious to hear any finally did what we should have supposed certain to more such adventures, "I thought you had been in lead to his discovery, -climbed up the cable and the Confederate navy?" "I was," said Aleck. over the bows, throwing over his shoulders the first "I was with Semmes everywhere he went; I was garment he found on the disorderly deck, and slowly in the naval brigade and blockade-running, and on walked the whole length of the ship: when, having the Alabama all the while he commanded her." deposited the provisions at the side of the unfortu"But not when she sank, I suppose?" I rejoined. nate ones, signifying that they were to inform no one, "Well, I was, and was picked up with him by the and keep them to themselves, as well as his few words Deerhound." It was a pretty sharp fight, was n't of Greek would let him, he dropped overboard by a it?" I suggestingly asked. "It was that," replied line from the quarter, and, leaving them in mute Aleck; but he did n't care about enlarging. "I and motionless wonder, came back as quietly as he suppose it was the eleven-inch shells that did her had gone. Bill could n't resist the temptation next business?" "O no," said he, coming to a kind of morning of waving a big white cloth at the ship, confessional, 66 we never had any chance; we had a signal which attracted the immediate attention and no gunners to compare with the Kearsarge's. Our suspicion of our watchful guardiano, who, with an gunners fired by routine, and when they had the effervescence of useless Greek, delivered his mind gun loaded, fired it off blind. They never changed on the subject of contumacia and communication, the elevation of their guns all the fight, and the at which we all laughed; we felt merrier that mornKearsarge was working up to us all the while, tak-ing than for many days past. ing advantage of every time she was hid by smoke to work a little nearer, and then her gunners took aim for every shot." "Then it is n't true that the Alabama tried to board the Kearsarge?" "No, sir; she did her best to get away from her from the time the fight commenced: we knew well that if we got in range of her Dahlgren howitzers, she would sink us in ten minutes." "But," I asked, "don't you believe that Semmes supposed he would whip the Kearsarge when he went out to fight her?" "No; he was bullied into it, and took good care to leave all his valuables on shore, and had a life-preserver on through the fight. I saw him put it on, and I thought if it was wise in him, it would n't be foolish in me, and I put one on too. When Semmes saw that the ship was going down, he told us all to swim who could, and was one of the first to jump into the water, and we all made for the Deerhound. I was a long way ahead of Semmes, and, when I came up to the Deerhound's boat, they asked me if I was Semmes before they would take me in. I said I was n't, and then they asked me what I was on the Alabama. Said I, 'No matter what I was on the Alabama, I shall be a dead man soon if you don't take me in.' They asked me again if I was an officer or a seaman, and would n't take me in until I told them that I was an officer." "But," said I, "did they actually refuse to pick up common seamen, and leave them to drown?" "They did that,” replied he, wrathfully, and probably not very correctly; "and as soon as they had Semmes on board, they made tracks as fast as they knew how, t we In fact, though we saw for several days more the boat going back and forwards from the ship to the shore, and knew that they went to bury the dead, could see them buried even with our glasses,never felt so oppressed by the horror of it since Bill's chivalric swim. We finished without other incident our appointed two weeks, and had soon the satisfaction of knowing that public clamor had obliged Syra to recognize the claims of humanity, and send food to the starving. We had to undergo a five days' "observation" behind the lighthouse island off the port, in company with the English steamer, which was, moreover, threatened with a third fortnight, which she escaped only by the energetic remonstrances of the British consul, backed up by the Legation at Athens, who persuaded the central government to send or ders to Syra that the steamer should be admitted to pratique. A Greek man-of-war was accordingly sent from the Piræus to Syra with a commission to ascertain the truth of the complaints of Mr. Lloyd, and, finding them well founded, ordered the admittance of the steamer to pratique; but so great was the terror of the population and the timidity of the commission, that the latter ceded to the threats of a revolution, and compromised on admitting the passengers to the lazaretto of Syra, and sending the ship away. If all these things are not recorded in the chronicles of that city, they are in the minds of many who were martyrs to the inhuman cowardice of Syra, and who will bear me testimony that every occurrence of which public recognition could be |