THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A JOURNALIST, VOLUME II IN TWO VOLUMES WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN 1901 [Illustration: W. Stillman] CONTENTS CHAP. XX. CONSULAR LIFE IN CRETE XXI. THE CRETAN INSURRECTION XXII. DIPLOMACY XXIII. ATHENS XXIV. ROSSETTI AND HIS FRIENDS XXV. RETURN TO JOURNALISM XXVI. THE MONTENEGRINS AND THEIR PRINCE XXVII. THE INSURRECTION IN HERZEGOVINA XXVIII. A JOURNEY IN MONTENEGRO AND ALBANIA XXIX. WAR CORRESPONDENCE AT RAGUSA XXX. THE WAR OF 1876 XXXI. RUSSIAN INTERVENTION AND THE CAMPAIGN OF 1877 XXXII. A JOURNEY INTO THE BERDAS XXXIII. THE TAKING OF NIKSICH XXXIV. MORATSHA XXXV. THE LEVANT AGAIN XXXVI. GREEK BROILS--TRICOUPI--FLORENCE XXXVII. THE BLOCKADE OF GREECE XXXVIII. CRISPI--A SECRET-SERVICE MISSION--MONTENEGRO REVISITED XXXIX. ITALIAN POLITICS XL. ADOWAH AND ITS CONSEQUENCES CHAPTER XX CONSULAR LIFE IN CRETE Cholera was raging all over the Levant, and there was no direct communication with any Turkish port without passing through quarantine. In the uncertainty as to getting to my new post by any route, I decided to leave my wife and boy at Rome, with a newcomer,--our Lisa, then two or three months old,--and go on an exploring excursion. Providing myself with a photographic apparatus, I took steamer at Civita Vecchia for Peiraeus. Arrived at Athens I found that no regular communication with any Turkish port was possible, and that the steamers to Crete had been withdrawn, though there had not been, either at that or at any previous time, a case of cholera in Crete; but such was the panic prevailing in Greece that absolute non-intercourse with the island and the Turkish empire had been insisted on by the population. People thought I might get a chance at Syra to run over by a sailing-boat, so I went to Syra. But no boat would go to Crete, because the quarantine on the return was not merely rigorous but merciless, and exaggerate to an incredible severity. No boat or steamer was admitted to enter the port coming from any Turkish or Egyptian port, though with a perfectly clean bill of health, and all ships must make their quarantine at the uninhabited island of Delos. Such was the panic that no one would venture to carry provisions to that island while there was a ship in quarantine, and during the fortnight I waited at Syra an English steamer without passengers, and with a clean bill of health, having finished her term, was condemned to make another term of two weeks, because a steamer had come in with refugees from Alexandria, and had anchored in the same roadstead. Mr. Lloyd, the English consul, protested and insisted on the steamer being released, and the people threatened to burn his house over his head if he persisted; but, as he did persist, the ship was finally permitted to communicate with Syra, but not to enter the harbor, and was obliged to leave without discharging or taking cargo, after being a month in quarantine.