In August of this year, I had unmistakable proof of the reality of the insurrection, having witnessed a skirmish between Zurba and Lakus, and narrowly escaped being taken prisoner near Theriso, with some of my colleagues and several officers of the men-of-war in port, Mr. Dickson and a portion of our excursion party having been actually captured by Hadji Mikhalis' forces within an hour's walk of Canéa. This season brought no change in the military position, there being a gradual weakening of the army until only about 5,000 regulars were disposable for field operation, and a total of less than 17,000 were reported to me by Turkish officers as the effective remaining from 82 battalions of Turkish troops, which with 22,000 Egyptians were the regular forces employed since the commencement of the insurrection, and of which only 10,000 of the latter had been since sent home otherwise than as sick or wounded. In September of 1868 I left Crete under medical orders, and with the impression, generally felt in Crete, that the Hellenic Government was about abandoning the insurrection. On arriving at Athens, where I determined to wait the result, I found the Cretan committee so far convinced of the bad faith of the Bulgaris government that they meditated resignation _en masse_ as an appeal to the people, and to discharge themselves of all responsibility for the impending collapse of the revolt. The Minister of Foreign Affairs soon after waited on me at my house to beg me to use my influence with the committee to persuade them to hold on, assuring me in the most earnest manner that the Government had no intention of withdrawing its support from the Cretans, and that it intended organizing an expedition on a most effective scale to reassure and reanimate the movement; and that it had the intention of directing this organization officially to ensure its efficiency. Meanwhile the Provisional Government of the island had made an earnest appeal to Coroneos to return and assume the command-in-chief of the insurrection, and he had prepared a plan by which he was confident of keeping up the war through another winter by a judicious employment of Cretan forces. His plan was accepted by the committee, but, on being laid before the Government, was rejected under the pretence that the sum demanded (£10,000) was beyond its means, and it proceeded without reference to the committee to organize at more than double the expense an expedition under the old Mainote palikari, Petropoulaki, in so open and undisguised a manner that, with most other friends of the Cretans, I was convinced that it was meant to give Turkey an opportunity to _brusquer les choses_ by (what Greece had hitherto avoided) _open_ violation of international law.