The hot sun, beating down on the well-tended vineyards, drew the nectar of the earth to the grapes, brushed them with a delicate bloom ere they fell beneath the feet of the winepressers to yield the juice that made the feasters merry. The blossom of the olive groves was succeeded by tiny green olives which swelled in the heat until they were ready to yield their rich oil which was so welcome to the people of other lands. Artists worked happily on the plaster walls, laying on their colours to delight the eye, potters kneaded their clay until it was as butter under the ball of the thumb. The people spun and sewed and draped their bodies in comely garments. But most of all they valued health, realized the necessity for adequate drainage. Did they become too civilized, these ancient people? Did they grow lazy in their luxury, disinclined to work? Who knows! Perhaps it was so. At any rate, desolation swept over them and blotted them out, just as the cities on the site of Troy were blotted out again and again. We can imagine the galleys of the invaders approaching the rocky coasts, the cries of alarm running through the palaces and over the island, the invaders springing ashore, fierce, strong, hard, not softened by too much civilization, relying on their own strength and weapons for sustenance, not upon the tribute exacted from other lands. Muscular arms that had thrust the galleys through the Mediterranean, dropped the sweeps and caught up weapons as the keels grounded. The sea curled about the legs of the invaders as they dropped over the prow and swarmed ashore. Fighters, every one, asking no quarter, giving none, seeking plunder with the sword, valuing other lives not at all and their own but little. See the women shrinking into the corners of the palaces, eyes full of fear, sensing approaching doom; men shouting and gasping, the invaders sweeping forward and cutting them down. A semi-barbarous people conquering a civilized people, cold iron superseding bronze, uncultured men with superior weapons triumphing over culture with inferior weapons. Long, long ago something like this happened in Crete; the palaces of the ancient people were toppled about their ears and palaces and people vanished into oblivion. Gaze on another scene thousands of years later. Absolute desolation on the hill of Kephala. No sound of music nor pitter-patter of pink feet on naked stones, only the song of the breeze; no sign of palaces, conquered and conquerors alike swept into the gulf of Time; only the same blue sea a mile or two away singing its eternal song on the same rocky coast. Men are swinging picks into the bosom of the earth, making great gashes and gaps in the hill, picking over the loosened rubbish, throwing it into baskets and carrying it away. An easy movement of the arm sends the contents of the basket sliding down the face of the dump, and the black-haired labourer turns back for another load.