So, when my _avant-courrier_ announced to the awkward squad of Anatolian infantry, ragged, sullen, that the "Consolos Bey" demanded the road, a savage frown of unwelcome gleamed through the disciplinary respect; while the shouting, chattering groups of Christian peasants ambling along on the mules and donkeys, with their little loads of fowls or oil for the market at Canéa, were generally arrested by the summons of the guard, and drew up respectfully at the roadside, the most respectful dismounting until I had passed. The road for ten or twelve miles runs westward over a level plain, the ancient bed of the Iardanos, by whose banks we know, from Homer, that the Cydonians dwelt. The fact that the Iardanos (now called Platanos, from the immense plane-trees growing on its banks) now empties into the sea ten miles from Canéa, has puzzled geographers to reconcile Cydonia with Canéa; but, on arriving at the point where the river debouches into and cuts across the plain, it will be seen that the new channel to the sea has been cut through the hills by the action of the river, and that the ancient course was evidently eastward through the still marshy plain into the bay of Suda, passing close to the position of Canéa. The roads in Crete are marked with historical associations of all ages, as the Appian Way with recollections of the great dead. The town that we pass, near the mouth of the Platanos, was the ancient Pergamos, whither Lycurgus, to evade the possibility of his laws being revoked, banished himself, where he died, and was buried. The town which we enter as we cross the Platanos at the ford is Alikianu, the scene of that atrocious and perfidious massacre of which I have told the story. It is a town of half ruinedd villas--some, of the Venetian days--buried in orange-trees, and so surrounded with olive groves that but little of it can be seen from the river. The road we must follow only skirts it, following the river, until it rises on a ridge of mountains, zigzag and undulating, up to Lakus. The Lakiotes are accounted among the bravest of the Cretans; and though military science, flank movements, and artillery made their town untenable in the late insurrection, it is still a formidable position. The village itself lies along under the summit ridge of the chain of hills which form a buttress to the Asprovouna, stretching north, with steep approaches from every side. It used to be a prosperous village, one of the largest in the island, but now its straggling houses were in ruins, two or three only having the roofs replaced, others having only a canopy of boughs laid over one end of the space enclosed by the blackened walls, enough to keep the dews off while the inhabitants slept, for rain never falls here through the summer months. All bespoke utter exhaustion and extreme poverty. The jaded, listless look of the people, the demoralization of war and exile, most of them having been