"I am sorely perplexed to answer this; I can only approach an answer by a sort of _memoria technica_. I made studies in Algiers for 'Samson Agonistes'; that will give you roughly the period. This visit made a deep impression on me; I have loved 'the East,' as it is called, ever since. By-the-bye, I drew here my (almost) only large water-colour drawing, 'A Negro Festival' [the picture Leighton alluded to as 'The Niggers'], which was thought very well of by my friends. To Spain (into which I had made a raid of a few days on a previous occasion when visiting the South of France for architecture, to which I am much devoted) I went the year of the cholera. I remember this because I was going to Constantinople, but was dissuaded by a friend there because of the ravages of that epidemic. The following year I _did_ go: Vienna, Danube, Varna, Constantinople, Broussa, Smyrna, Rhodes, Athens (the greatest architectural emotion of my life, by far), &c. This was the year _before_ those poor young Englishmen were murdered on Pentelicus, up which I had been with _the same_ guide. My visit to Egypt, and up the Nile on a steamer, given me by the Khedive, was a year before the opening of the Suez Canal; I rode over the Salt Lakes with Mons. de Lesseps and a party of his friends. Damascus a year before I exhibited the 'Jew's House,' I _think_. Spain, revisited, and Morocco, the year before last. This is a roundabout way of getting about dates, but, contrary to my expectation, I think I have contrived to fix all the chief journeys approximately." In 1867 Leighton wrote to his father:-- LLOYD STEAMER "ADRIATIC," _November 28, 1867_.