ay to turn, whether to avoid or meet
the enemy. No words can depict the state of things. I have had
correspondence with the Government and all the chiefs, but have waited
on none, because I am determined to keep myself clear of faction, and go
straightforward in what I consider to be my duty." "We are now weighing
anchor," he added, in a postscript written in the evening of the same
day, "and the Austrian commodore is coming into the bay--an evil omen.
He is watching, like a vulture, the agonies of the expiring authorities
of Greece."

"As you have done me the honour," said Lord Cochrane, in a letter to the
Government, "to request my opinion regarding the manner of settling the
disputes between the contending chiefs who hold the higher and lower
fortresses of Nauplia, it becomes a sacred duty to give that opinion
without the slightest reserve, because the consequences of any half
measure will be entirely destructive of the influence of your
excellencies throughout Greece, and eventually may frustrate the
endeavours of the European powers to promote a settlement with the
Porte. Your excellencies, then, must at once remove from the situation
in which you are now placed, or, more properly speaking, to which you
have fled, and where you are still under the cannon of the disputing
chiefs, or both these chiefs must be caused to abandon the fortresses
they hold. To suffer one to remain and to expel the other would be
voluntarily to surrender your authority, and through Greece and
throughout the world you would be considered in no other light than as
instruments for giving the semblance of legality to the dictates of a
military chief."

Lord Cochrane did not wait to see the end of this dispute between the
mock Government and its nominal subjects. He left Nauplia on the 22nd of
July to complete the arrangements he had made for another attempt in
defence of Greece. He had already sent Admiral Saktoures and a small
force to maintain a show of blockading Alexandria, in order that thereby
neutral vessels, at any rate, might be deterred from giving aid to the
Turkish cause. He had sent vessels to blockade the Gulf of Patras in the
same way. He had also issued a vigorous proclamation to the inhabitants
of Western Greece, urging them to rise against their oppressors, and he
was eager to go thither himself and encourage the work, for which he
hoped that his fleet and his naval arrangements were now better fitted.
One important auxilia