They, however, refused to lead us to any house; for, said they, 'we know not what men ye are.' At last one good man took us into his house and gave us a room, and figs and brandy for supper. We were thankful for anything. He was a poor peasant with a pretty wife and a perfectly lovely daughter. We got to Kalamata next day, meeting on the way numbers of Mainiotes coming to buy figs &c. in the Messenian plain, all armed. Our baggage had arrived very late overnight. We went to the so-called consul, an agent of the consul at Patras, and sent the letter of recommendation of the Waiwode of Caritzena to the Waiwode of Kalamata; but he took no notice of it, and did nothing whatever for us, so we had to find a house for ourselves. We pitched upon a lofty Turkish tower commanding the city, with a very rotten floor which threatened at any moment to let us through from the second storey to the base. The only way up to our room was by a crazy ladder. The shutters were riddled with bullets. Some time before there had been a grand engagement between this tower and the cupola of a neighbouring church, where some Mainiotes in the service of one of their great captains, a certain Benachi, had defended themselves. Kalamata seems to be a constant scene of fights between the party of the Bey appointed by the Porte, or rather the Capitan Pasha, and the party who want to appoint a Bey of their own, and this is the way they fight, each party from its own tower. From our tower we made panoramic sketches of the city, but were much interrupted by visitors. Among them came a young Mainiote Albanian officer from Church's contingent, who was here recruiting. He was accompanied by two armed Mainiotes, and said he had twenty more concealed about the town in case of danger. He invited us to come with him into Maina as far as Dolus, where his family lived, a proposal we eagerly closed with, and appointed the next morning." FOOTNOTE: [28] One Colocotronis, a chief of klephts, attained great influence in the War of Independence. CHAPTER IX TRIP TO MAINA--ITS RELATIVE PROSPERITY--RETURN TO KALAMATA. SECOND TRIP TO MAINA--MURGINOS--SPARTA--NAPOLI TO ATHENS. "The Mainiote border comes to within half a mile of Kalamata, and the neighbourhood of its ferocious population, who are as savage and even braver than the Turks, makes the latter much meeker here than in other parts of the country--that is, in a general way, for they can be very fierce still on occasions. A ghastly thing happened during our stay. We heard one evening the report of a pistol in the house of the Albanian guard which stood just under our windows. It seemed one of the brutes had shot his brother in a quarrel. Here was a gruesome example under our eyes; and besides I was told all sorts of hideous stories of Mainiote and Albanian cruelties which made my blood run cold, and still spoils all my pleasure in thinking of this barbarous region.