or of Smyrna, where we
remained five hours. I engaged a donkey, and rode out to the Caravan
Bridge, where the Greek driver and I smoked narghilehs and drank coffee in
the shade of the acacias. I contrasted my impressions with those of my
first visit to Smyrna last October--my first glimpse of Oriental ground.
Then, every dog barked at me, and all the horde of human creatures who
prey upon innocent travellers ran at my heels, but now, with my brown face
and Turkish aspect of grave indifference, I was suffered to pass as
quietly as my donkey-driver himself. Nor did the latter, nor the ready
_cafidji_, who filled our pipes on the banks of the Meles, attempt to
overcharge me--a sure sign that the Orient had left its seal on my face.
Returning through the city, the same mishap befel me which travellers
usually experience on their first arrival. My donkey, while dashing at
full speed through a crowd of Smyrniotes in their Sunday dresses, slipped
up in a little pool of black mud, and came down with a crash. I flew over
his head and alighted firmly on my feet, but the spruce young Greeks,
whose snowy fustanelles were terribly bespattered, came off much worse.
The donkey shied back, levelled his ears and twisted his head on one side,
awaiting a beating, but his bleeding legs saved him.

We left at two o'clock, touched at Scio in the evening, and the next
morning at sunrise lay-to in the harbor of Syra. The Piraeus was only
twelve hours distant; but after my visitation of fever in Constantinople,
I feared to encounter the pestilential summer heats of Athens. Besides, I
had reasons for hastening with all speed to Italy and Germany. At ten
o'clock we weighed anchor again and steered southwards, between the groups
of the Cyclades, under a cloudless sky and over a sea of the brightest
blue. The days were endurable under the canvas awning of our quarter-deck,
but the nights in our berths were sweat-baths, which left us so limp and
exhausted that we were almost fit to vanish, like ghosts, at daybreak.

Our last glimpse of the Morea--Cape Matapan--faded away in the moonlight,
and for _two_ days we travelled westward over the burning sea. On the
evening of the 11th, the long, low outline of Malta rose gradually against
the last flush of sunset, and in two hours thereafter, we came to anchor
in Quarantine Harbor. The quarantine for travellers returning from the
East, which formerly varied from fourteen to twenty-one days, is now
reduced t