By considerable display of mental and physical energy, a few of the passengers at last got into a boat and gained the quay of the Piræus. _Grog's-shop_ was written on the shutter of a petty coffee-house, and a smart-looking Albanian stepped up, and proffered his services in excellent English. He had lived in London, he said: was a subject of Queen Victoria, and had the honour of being set down in Murray, page 25. With such recommendations, who could refuse the guidance of Demetri Pomorn? Not Mr Smith and his party, evidently, for they immediately engaged him for the day, hired a shabby vehicle from an adjacent cab-stand, and started on their hot and dusty road to Athens, thence about five miles distant. There they killed the lions, ate quince ices, bought Latakia tobacco, dined at the Hotel d'Orient _à l'Anglaise_, with Harvey sauce and pale ale, off English plates and dishes, and pulled on board again at night, to the tune of _Jim Crow_, played by an Anglified violin in one of the "grog's-shops" aforesaid. At five in the morning sleep was at an end, thanks to the clanking, stamping, and bawling upon the steamer's deck, and Mr Smith left the cabin, to reconnoitre and breathe fresh air. Some deck passengers had come on board at Athens; amongst others, a poor Albanian family, bound to Smyrna to pack figs. They were miserable, broken-spirited looking people, but picturesque in spite of their poverty; a melon or two and some coarse bread composed their entire stores for the voyage. This, however, was of no great duration, for at daybreak the next morning the passengers per Scamandre were told they were off Smyrna. "It was very pleasant to hear this--to be told that the land I saw close to us was Asia, and that the distant slender spires that rose from the thickly clustered houses were minarets--that I should have twelve hours to go on shore, and see real camels, fig-trees, scheiks, and veiled women! And yet I could scarcely persuade myself that such was the case--that the distant Smyrna--of which I had only heard, in the Levant mail, as a remote place, burnt down once a-year, where figs came from--was actually within a good stone's throw of the steamer." The travellers' expectations were more than realised. "I do not believe," says Mr Smith, "that throughout the future journey any impressions were conveyed more vivid than those we experienced during our first half hour in the bazaars of the sunny, bustling, beauty-teeming Smyrna." The appearance of a party of foreigners, and of the well-known face of the _valet-de-place_, caused a stir amongst the dealers, one of whom accosted Mr Smith in good English. "'How d'ye do, sir; very well? that's right. Look here, sir; beautiful musk purse; very fine smell. Ten piastres.' "A piastre is worth twopence and a fraction. "'How did you learn to speak English so well?' I asked.