sion charged is half a piastre; but if piastres are
wanted, two must be paid. The government value of a collonato is
twenty piastres; in general exchange it is reckoned at twenty-two,
and at the consulate's at twenty-one piastres.

DEPARTURE FROM ALEXANDRIA.

September 7th.

At eight o'clock in the morning I betook myself on board the French
steam-packet Eurotas, a beautiful large vessel of 160-horse power.
At nine o'clock we weighed anchor.

The weather was very unfavourable. Though it did not rain, we
continually had contrary winds, and the sea generally ran high. In
consequence we did not sight the island of Candia until the evening
of the third day, four-and-twenty hours later than we should have
done under ordinary circumstances.

Two women, who came on board as passengers to Syra, were so
violently attacked by sea-sickness, that they left the deck a few
hours after we got under way, and did not reappear until they landed
at Syra. A very useful arrangement on board the French vessel is
the engagement of a female attendant, whose assistance sometimes
becomes very necessary. Heaven be praised, I had not much to fear
from the attacks of sea-sickness. The weather must be very bad--as,
for instance, during our passage through the Black Sea--before my
health is affected, and even then I recover rapidly. During our
whole voyage, even when the weather was wretched, I remained
continually on deck, so that during the day-time I could not miss
seeing even the smallest islet. On

September 10th,

late in the evening, we discovered the island of Candia or Crete,
and the next morning we were pretty close to it. We could, however,
distinguish nothing but bare unfruitful mountains, the tallest among
which, my namesake Mount Ida, does not look more fertile than the
rest. On the right loomed the island of Scarpanto. We soon left it
in our wake, and also passed the Brothers' Islands, and many others,
some of them small and uninhabited, besides separate colossal rocks,
towering majestically into the sea. Soon afterwards we passed the
islands Santorin and Anaph.

The latter of these islands is peculiarly beautiful. In the
foreground a village lies at the foot of a high mountain, with its
peak surmounted by a little church. On the side towards the sea
this rock shoots downwards so perpendicularly, that we might fancy
it had been cut off with a saw.

Since we had come in sight of Candia, we had not been sailing