Consulting one of the submitted Meskliotes, who waited his chance for the _débris_ of the picnic, we were informed that it would be very far from safe to follow our proposed route, which was exposed in its whole line to the chance of shots from the main mountain ridge; but he offered to guide us by a road running along the side of the ridge furthest from the insurgents, and where he could warn any outposts of them that we were coming. This road was a fair sample of those which existed in Crete before the war, a mere bridle-path scratched in the slope of a huge landslide, which rose above us two or three hundred feet, and descended three or four times that distance into the bed of the Platanos. Part of it was too dizzy and dangerous to ride, and we led our beasts hesitating and hobbling along. We were soon amongst the outposts of the insurgents, as we had unmistakable evidence on arriving at Theriso, where we found a detachment of a dozen or more rough, motley-looking fellows, armed with all kinds of guns, and clad in all ways except well. They looked askance at our fez-wearing colonel and his two cavalrymen, but from respect for the consular presences respected _their_ persons. We drank with them at the spring, exchanged identifications, and pursued our way down the celebrated ravine, the scene of two terrible disasters to the Turkish army during different insurrections. Nothing can be more uncomfortable, in a military point of view, than one of these Cretan ravines. Cut in the limestone rock by the glacier torrents of ages, zigzag in their courses, and shut between abrupt ridges, with no road but an unsatisfactory bridle-path, the troop which is incautious enough to enter without crowning the heights on each side as it advances is certain to be hemmed in, and to be severely treated by a comparatively small foe or exterminated by a large one.