hether the boldness of the design or the
precision with which the details of the tiny figure are wrought out
is the more admirable. The attitude is that of a man flinging himself
forth in the abandon of a violent leap, with legs and arms extended.
His straining muscles are indicated with perfect faithfulness, and
even the veins in the diminutive hand and the nails of the tiny
fingers are clearly marked. The hair had been formed by curling
strands of thin gold wire inserted in the skull. There can be no doubt
that these figures formed part of a scene like that of the toreador
fresco, for the violent motion suggested is consistent with nothing
but some desperate feat of agility like bull-grappling. Probably the
leaping figures were suspended by thin gold wires over the backs of
ivory bulls, and thus presented a realistic miniature reproduction
of the Minoan bull-ring. The extraordinary multiplication of such
scenes, in painting, in the round, on gems and seal impressions,
helps one to realize the hold which the passion of bull-fighting,
or, rather, bull-grappling, had upon the Cretan mind, a hold no
doubt connected with the important part which the bull appears
to have played in the Minoan religion (Plate XIX.).

[Illustration XII: MINOAN PAVED ROAD (_p_. 110)

NORTH ENTRANCE, KNOSSOS (_p_. 75)]

One of the season's finds was peculiarly useful and interesting, as
having yielded a considerable mass of material for reconstructing
the appearance of a Minoan town. A great chest of cypress wood--in
which perhaps some Knossian Nausicaa once kept her store of linen--had
been decorated with a series of enamelled plaques, depicting a
Minoan town, with its towers and houses, its fields and cattle
and orchards. The chest itself had perished in the conflagration
of the palace, leaving only a charred mass of woodwork; but the
plaques survived. Some of them represent houses, evidently of wood
and plaster fabric, for the round ends of the beams show in the
frontage. On the ground-floor are the doors, in some cases double;
above are second and third storeys, with rows of windows fitted with
some red material, which may have been oiled and tinted parchment,
while some of the houses have an attic storey with windows above the
third floor. It is evident that the houses of the Minoan burghers
were not the closely-packed mud hovels, separated from one another
only by narrow alleys, which characterize the plan of the Egyptian
town discover