the curse of Eastern inns. We attempted to cross the mountains of Euboea. The snow higher up was so deep that we had to come back to the coast, where we lodged for the night in a veritable pirates' castle, which had no entrance on the ground floor and could only be entered by a ladder. On the stone floor of this keep we found our host, supposed to be an ex¬ pirate, seated on the floor with his retainers round a charcoal fire, and here I smoked my first cigarette, which was then an almost unknown form of smoking in England. We were hospitably entertained with kebabs and pilaf, two excellent Eastern dishes, which I still eat with relish, and, after a long haggle, Alexander announced that he had made a bargain with our host to take us in his galley to Volo, which was then Turkish territory. As it was a feast day they would not start then, but we went down to the shore and slept under a shed ready to start at daybreak. I have never seen a more curious boat, propelled by twelve rowers in what seemed a most laborious way, and very much resembling, I imagine, the galleys of the Venetians on a small scale. She was rowed by six pair of oars double banked, and at each stroke the men had to jump up on to the bench before them and throw themselves back with their weight on the oar into the bottom of the boat.
The dress and features of some of these rowers would have made them well suited to represent Greek pirates in a comic opera. But they stuck to their work like men, with occasional snacks of bread, dried onions and very strong goats' milk cheese, the whole day long, and brought us safely into Volo at night. Here we found the Turkish fleet, under the command of Hobart Pasha, lying at anchor, and I was informed that on account of some grievance between Greece and Turkey which might lead to hostilities, we could not be allowed to land, so we went alongside the flag-ship, and hailed the admiral's ship in English. He told us that the best thing we could do was to go on board a French steamer that happened to be in harbour on her way to Salonica, where we landed the next day.
In this town we found a British Consul who introduced us to the Turkish Governor, who gave us permission and a passport to go into the interior, and, hearing that we were sportsmen, invited us to a battue which he had arranged in the bay. He was very much interested in my Henry breech¬ loader, as such things were then unknown in Turkey, where most of the inhabitants still used flint and steel guns. I have been put to shame by a young Turk using such an antiquated gun, with which he wiped my eyes handsomely at a partridge; but powder was very scarce, and we were only allowed to land a few pounds by the expenditure of much bakshish.
The marine battue was especially directed against an immense flock of wild swans, which had been driven out of their usual quarters by the severe weather, and covered a large expanse of sea in thousands. Everyone in the town who owned a gun seemed to have been invited, and perhaps a hundred boats were formed into line to surround the swans, with the Pasha in a man-of-war galley in the middle. We tried to explain to him that the line should be a semicircle with the outer horns in advance, and that in this way the swans might be compelled to fly over the boats, but etiquette would not allow any boat to go before that of the Pasha, and the line was so ill kept that very few swans were bagged. I was able, by
