O.[99] I will write to him soon.――Yours affectionately, R. H. F.’ From Malta also, on Christmas night, a letter was despatched to Dartington, addressed, apparently, to John Spedding Froude, which carries on the record of the travellers. All the Froudes, like all the Hares, could draw. ‘… There is so much that is picturesque and singular about this place, that I do not despair of occupation for all the fifteen days in drawing, if the weather is only tolerable. The boats, and the dresses, and the colours and forms of the buildings are all as good practice as anything I can fancy, and I shall not be sorry to have time on my hands for studying them at leisure. We shall be allowed to go about the harbour [in quarantine] as much as we like, and there are several places where we may land. This will have to start a day or two after our return, so you will not hear much more of Malta till the next packet. As yet I have made egregious failures in attempts to colour; indeed, I have had no opportunity of doing anything from nature, and recollection supplies one too indistinctly. My father has made many very interesting coast drawings as we have come along, but he has done nothing in a finished way. ‘_Corfu, Jan. 1._――We got here the day before yesterday, after a most interesting voyage. The sea has been as still as a lake, and we have had a light breeze in our favour; but it must be owned that we have sailed away from the fine weather. Ever since we got here it has rained torrents, and is now blowing a violent gale, so that we thank our stars we are in harbour. On Friday morning we (as you would say) made Zante on our larboard bow, at a distance of about fifty miles. The high land of Cephalonia appeared at the same time, so they kept her away three-quarters of a point, and made for the passage between the islands. The south point of Cephalonia is a very high mountain; it was covered with snow, which here and there appeared through the clouds. Zante is cliffy, and not so very unlike some of the Isle of Wight.[100] We got to the town just after dark, and went ashore to make out what we could. We went to a billiard-room, a coffee-house, the head inn, and two or three shops. Everything was filthy to a degree, but there seemed to be some really handsome houses, such as Sir John Vanbrugh might have built. The shops are all open to the street, and one would think that the shopkeepers had never taken more than coppers in their lives; yet in a tobacco shop, on asking the price of a cherry-stick pipe, which I should have guessed at twelve shillings in England, they told me it was one hundred dollars, and a midshipman who was with us, and had lived a great deal in those parts, said that it was not at all dear at the money. The mouthpiece was amber inlaid with turquoise, and in that miserable-looking shop there must have been thirty or forty more pipes as costly: I wonder where they get customers? We drank a bottle of Zante wine at the head inn,