BY WILLIAM J. STILLMAN, Late U. S. Consul in Crete . NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1874 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by HENRY HOLT, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. TO THE MEMORY OF LE GRAND LOCKWOOD , OF NEW YORK , This Volume IS DEDICATED, IN RECOGNITION OF THE UNOSTENTATIOUS, UNPROMISED, AND UNRESERVED LIBERALITY WHICH RENDERED IT POSSIBLE FOR THE AUTHOR TO REMAIN IN CRETE DURING THE INSURRECTION....

In committing to print the subjoined record of the Cretan revolt of 1866-7-8, I am fulfilling a duty in regard to a series of events quæque ipse vidi et quorum pars magna fui , and which, if not in themselves of importance, are so as a revelation of the manner in which political influences work in the East, and perhaps still more as a curious exemplification of the weight which personal accidents, private intrigue and pique, and the capacity or incapacity of obscure officials, may have in determ

A student of classical ethnology, curious to restore the antique man, can do no better, so far as the Greek variety is concerned, than to go to Crete and study its people. The Cretan of to-day preserves probably the character of antiquity, and holds to his ancient ways of feeling and believing, and, within the new conditions, as far as possible of acting, more nearly than would be believed possible, and affords a better field of investigation into the nature of the classical man than any existin

There was an annual fair at Omalo in the month of April, and I had intended to make this the occasion of a journey through Sphakia. The Pasha was very earnest in counselling me not to go, and magnifying difficulties for the passage; but this only made me more disposed to go, if only to cross his humor, as he had been exceedingly annoying to me, and we carried on a polite war, defensive on my side, but on his, part of a systematic course of bullying the consuls in order to diminish their influenc

The real agitation began when the Assembly finally adjourned to Boutzounaria, a tiny village at the edge of the plain of Canéa. Three thousand men were assembled on a little plateau overlooking the plain, and about three miles from the city. Here gushes out of the living rock the stream which supplies the city with water, by an aqueduct which dates from the Hellenic times. Metellus cut it when he laid siege to Cydonia, and the Cretans in the war of Greek independence repeated the offence, and th

Unable to provoke a direct collision with the committee, the Pasha had recourse to another expedient: he called in the entire Mussulman population of the island to the walled cities. Totally unprepared for this unnecessary step, the unfortunate Mohammedans broke up their establishments of all kinds, and repaired to the fortresses in a state of the greatest irritation at the sacrifice they had made and the privations they had had to endure. One complained that he had left his harvest uncut, and a

The first relief was the flying visit of Admiral Lord Clarence Paget, in the Psyche despatch-boat, direct from Constantinople en route for Malta, to inform us that the Arethusa had been ordered to Crete. This was a reprieve of a few days, and was followed by complete freedom from anxiety on the arrival of the Arethusa , the sound of whose saluting guns at Suda Bay (the port of Canéa for large ships) produced an emotion which was like waking from a long nightmare. We all went to Suda to pay our o

The rescue happily concluded, the Pasha organized a movement against Lakus, Theriso, Keramia, strong points where the Christians had assembled in considerable numbers and from whence they might harry the plains of Canéa, carrying off flocks and occasionally prisoners. This expedition consisted of twelve thousand men. While the organization was going on, the Christians came down to the number of several hundred, and took possession of the direct road to Theriso, and attacked the block-house on th

No resistance was after this offered until Vafé was reached. Here about two hundred Greek volunteers and a thousand Cretans, under the command of Hadji Mikhali, of Lakus, and Costa Veloudaki, of Sphakia, were concentrated. The Cretan chiefs were opposed to any regular fighting, and counselled a retreat into the ravines, where they could entangle the troops and attack them without serious risk to themselves, while a pitched fight was not only not in the way of the islanders, but, if lost, as they

Mustapha immediately retraced his steps to Canéa, and, housing himself outside the walls, having sworn not to re-enter his capital until the insurgents had been subdued, called a council to plan measures to strike a quick blow at the insurrection before the effect of Arkadi should be felt in the public opinion of Europe. Up to that time the struggle had seemed to me a hopeless and insane one, and though my warmest sympathies had been, of course, with the Cretans, as victims of a monstrous injust

The remaining auxiliaries, paralyzed by want of organization, the usual dissensions of the chiefs, and their mutual jealousies, even more than by their want of supplies, retreated before Mustapha, who, after some weeks of indecision, resumed his campaign; but, instead of following up his advantages by land, and getting possession of Omalos as a better base of operations, and preventing the Cretans from reoccupying it, he embarked his troops at Suia, and attempted to land at St. Rumséli, the entr

Immediately after the affair of Arkadi, I had, in conveying to our Government the petition of the Cretans for ships to be sent to carry away their families, recapitulated the course I had taken, and proposed to the Government that, if an American man-of-war came to Crete for the deportation of non-combatants, and the local government made any protest, I should reply that, their conduct having been in violation of every dictate of humanity and law, they were not entitled to appeal to the latter i

By this time, the Powers had learned how utterly mendacious all the Turkish official reports were, and that the insurrection was further than ever from being suppressed; and the Porte, dreading the effect of the knowledge of the utter failure of the Imperial Commission from which it had promised itself such immense results, developed a new plan, in which the douceurs of a plébiscite were to be administered by its armies, and a new assembly constituted, who were to sit at Constantinople, and repr

To compensate myself for the slights of my fellow-countrymen, and at the same time escape from and retaliate for the annoyances of the Turkish officials, I sent to Corfu for a little cutter-yacht, and until it came sent my family to Syra. All official intercourse had ceased between the Commissioner and myself, and, encouraged by our Secretary of Legation, who maintained a correspondence with the dragoman of the Commission, the Pasha showed his determination to drive me out of the island. It was

On the march forward through Mylopotamos the troops avenged themselves for their flight and losses in the most barbarous manner. Olive-trees were burned and cut down, every house burned, and every luckless Christian who fell into their hands sent with short shrift to his account. The European officer above alluded to declared to me that he was an eye-witness of the oft-repeated incident of burning the refugees in one of the caves, around the mouth of which a huge pile of green wood was piled, an

Another step of the moral intervention which the Russian Government had been so long and so skilfully engineering came at this juncture to make the cause of the Porte more hopeless. The negotiations with France had resulted in a kind of entente on the Eastern question, by which the French emperor had agreed, under certain contingencies, to unite with the Russians in deporting the families of the Christian combatants. The new French agent, Tricou, had from the beginning shown a tendency to critic

In judging of such acts as the intervention of Russia, we have no standard but success, and the greater or less fitness of one of the participants to rule; but from the point of view from which I must look at it, the conduct of Russia seems to me as the most base, cruel, and politically dishonorable which I have ever known, being, as it was, practised on a wretched people, co-religionary, whose sufferings had been extreme, and which, being offered a tangible and not inconsiderable concession in

The last year of the war I had left Crete on a leave of absence of two months, which was extended indefinitely by Mr. Washburn, then Secretary of State, on account of the health of my family; but in April my wife, broken by the hardships of our Cretan life and sick-bed watching; and dejected greatly by the loss of a cause in which she had the most passionate sympathy, and by the misery of the unhappy Cretans around us, became insane and ended her life. Simultaneously, Mr. Fish, now become Secret

[Translation.] PETITION FROM THE LATE CRETAN GREEK ASSEMBLY TO THE SULTAN. To His Imperial August Majesty, our Sovereign Abdul Aziz Khan. Majesty : We, the humble undersigned, having been specially delegated by the whole Christian population of Crete to avail ourselves of the benevolent and philanthropic intentions which the Imperial Government have at all times evinced towards this island, now take the liberty to lay at the feet of your Imperial Majesty the following humble prayer, in the hope