We had made no such provision, and so we were obliged to toil back in the intense heat of the July sun beating down into the gorge, and, arriving past noon, to be refreshed by sherbet and coffee by the hospitable commander of the station at Xyloscala, the snow of the sherbet being brought from the opposite cliff two hundred yards away, but an hour's climb to get to it. The commander was a more intelligent man than it is usual for Turkish officers to be, and he related how during the insurrection he had led a detachment round to the top of the opposing cliffs, and how when they got there they were like the twenty thousand men of the King of France, and had to come back by the way they went. However, they have now a blockhouse at the Xyloscala, another at Samaria in sight and signalling of it, and a third at St. Roumeli, so that, for the future, there need be no doubt as to who holds the Heart of Crete. The night's discomforts had been too great to allow me to spend another in Omalos, so, after a slight detour to look at the immense wild pear-trees which grow on the plains, we rode directly back to Canéa, accompanied by the Pasha. Meeting the priest of Lakus by the way, I gave the village a vicarious berating for having in such an ungrateful manner refused hospitality to a man who had been their advocate and friend so long, and whom they had obliged to go back to their enemies and his for a dinner. He seemed much ashamed, and the day after I received a profound apology from the primates pleading ignorance of my personality. I improved the acquaintance with the Pasha (Mehmet Ali, "the Prussian," so-called from his race, though he was brought up from boyhood as a Mussulman), whom I found more intelligent and liberal than any Turkish official I had met with, except A'ali and Server Effendi, to introduce the condition of the chiefs of the insurrection remaining in exile, many of them old and worn out, afflicted with the nostalgia which mountain people know so well, and ready to submit unreservedly to the government. A nominal amnesty had been granted, relieving all from any political prosecution, but not from the civil suits for damages, etc., which might be brought against the chiefs who had taken sheep or cattle or destroyed any property. Two or three of the chiefs who had returned had already been thrown into prison on suits of this kind, and as the complainants were always adherents of the government through the war, and all the minor officials were of that class whose loyalty had been beyond question from the beginning, a civil suit had pretty much the same color as a political persecution. This state of things effectually prevented the return of any of the prominent personages of the insurrection, who, living in exile, were reasons of the strongest against the restoration of tranquillity, and made a convenient appliance for agitation and renewed strife on any disturbance of the political atmosphere of Europe.