The Commissioner withdrew immediately, taking in his escort all the Mussulman families who had been blockaded in Selinos and Candanos, together with those of some neighboring villages who had not hitherto been molested by the Christians, the insurrectionary committee having still hopes of conciliating the opposition of their Mussulman compatriots, and, in pursuance of this policy, having given orders to do everything possible to induce the Mussulmans to make common cause with the Christians. These, however, augmented the train of the Commissioner with their families and flocks, and the return of the army so encumbered was slow and dangerous, the Christians following and harassing the flanks, showing resistance in front at all difficult passes, and cutting off stragglers; the troops, in retaliation, destroying all villages on the road of return as they had on that of going. I had been able to watch from my balcony the departure of the troops, and follow their line of march by the smoke of the burning villages; and after two weeks' absence, during the latter part of which no communications had been kept up between the army and the capital, the wildest panic prevailing at headquarters, where rumors were generally believed to the effect that the whole army had been blockaded, I was able, from the same point, to perceive the return of the troops by the same ominous indications. In returning by a shorter route than that followed in going, the army had to pass by a difficult ravine, called Kakopetra, where the Christians made a determined attack and attempt to block the road, in which they would certainly have succeeded had they possessed modern firearms, but as they were armed mostly with the tufeks of their grandfathers, or pistols of the war of Greek independence, an attack on equal terms was impossible. The Pasha, by throwing out his irregulars on both sides to keep back the insurgents, and pressing down the road, with the imperial troops and Egyptian regulars escorting the families and flocks, succeeded in forcing his way through, though with serious loss. A European surgeon attached to the government hospital at Canéa assured me that the killed amounted to 120 and the wounded to upwards of 800, the wounds being mostly slight from spent balls apparently fired from pistols. In fact, if the Cretans had been well armed and provided with good ammunition, the campaign would probably have ended there and then, and Kakopetra become as famous as Askypho in the great insurrection, when the same Mustapha, in 1823, was blockaded, and his army almost exterminated, himself, with his immediate followers, only escaping by scattering the contents of the military treasury on the road. The successful return of the army to Canéa was the signal of the most enthusiastic rejoicings on the part of the Mussulman population of Canéa, who, with the extravagance of a semi-barbaric people, had passed the last few days in the wildest frenzy of fear and irritation.