We went to the principal hotel in the great square. The landlord received us with many expressions of joy. We ordered luncheon and a carriage. “I will go and cook at once,” said he. “Eh! Gentlemen! Six months ago I had a cook and waiters and maids, two coachmen and plenty of horses. Now I must go and dress the luncheon. I must serve it; and when you have finished I shall harness the carriage and drive you out! and I shall make your beds if you sleep here to-night.” Perfectly good-humoured the poor man was, and that made his story all the more pathetic. When we got home, after a drive through the lovely garden scenery, he made the beds, for we were not to sail till the next day. More talk in the evening. The distress was beyond belief, and it was no mere temporary distress—bad times with the hope of better things in the future. The olive harvest, for instance, was in deadly straits, for the proprietors could not pay a wage of five shillings a day for the gathering, and the labourers were the masters of the situation and could demand what they chose. In this way did the small landowners who helped in working the plebiscite reap the reward of their folly. Humble civil servants who used to be paid to the hour had to wait a week or a fortnight for the salary upon which their daily food depended. Cultivation looked as though it must die out, for the four or five hundred wretched Greek soldiery who had replaced the English garrison spent their scanty pay on tobacco alone; no one knew how they lived. Corfu was desolate and England had lost a stronghold that never can be replaced. No wonder the Ungern Sternbergs rejoiced! It is perhaps one of the signs of England’s greatness that she has been able so far to survive the foreign policy of Lord Russell. Yet even to-day, in 1915, she is paying the penalty and at what a price! I wonder whether if he were still alive he would tell us, as he did at Blairgowrie more than fifty years ago, to “Rest and be thankful.” Nov. 11.—Our last day’s cruise was delightful. The calendar told us that we were in November. The weather said June. Our skipper being a native of Dalmatia intimately knowing the coast and all its snares dared to take his big ship inside the islands, so we had a view of lovely scenery usually only possible for the smallest of craft. At a point on the shore stood a little house and in front of it a group consisting of his wife and children, on the watch to wave him Godspeed; possibly the chance of a glimpse of those dear ones weighed more with him than the desire to show us the beauties of the Dalmatian coast—at any rate, we were the gainers. At Trieste we said good-bye to our good friend the Russian, whom we left still chuckling over Lord Russell and the Ionian Islands. CHAPTER XV CHINA IN 1865-1866