Returned to Canea, I found that the Cretan assembly had begun its deliberations at Omalos. The real agitation began (ten days after my arrival) on its coming down to Boutzounaria, a little village on the edge of the plain of Canea, where it could negotiate with the governor and communicate with the consuls. There was a plateau from which the plain could be overlooked, so that no surprise was possible, and on which was the spring from which Canea got its water, an aqueduct from the pre-Roman times bringing it to the city. It was cut by Metellus when he besieged Canea, and at all the crises of Cretan history had been contested by the two parties in its wars. Long deliberation was required to formulate the petition to the Sultan, but it was finally completed, and a solemn deputation of gray-headed captains of villages brought to each of the consuls a copy, and consigned the original to the governor for transmission to Constantinople. He, in accepting it, ordered the assembly to disperse and wait at home for the answer. He had on a previous occasion tried the same device, and when the assembly had dispersed he had arrested the chiefs, called a counter assemblage of his partisans, and got up a counter petition, which he sent to the Sultan. They, therefore, refused this time to separate. The reverence of the Cretans for their traditional procedure was such that when the assembly had dissolved, its authority, and that of the persons composing it, lapsed, and the deputies had no right to hope for obedience if they called on the population to rise. The assembly would have to be again convened, elected, and organized in order to exercise any authority.