The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II

The Autobiography of a
Journalist, Volume II

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Volume II,
by William James Stillman
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Title: The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II
Author: William James Stillman
Release Date: March 15, 2004 [eBook #11594]
Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A JOURNALIST, VOLUME II
IN TWO VOLUMES
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
1901

[Illustration: W. Stillman]

CONTENTS
CHAP.

XX. CONSULAR LIFE IN CRETE
XXI. THE CRETAN INSURRECTION
XXII. DIPLOMACY
XXIII. ATHENS
XXIV. ROSSETTI AND HIS FRIENDS
XXV. RETURN TO JOURNALISM
XXVI. THE MONTENEGRINS AND THEIR PRINCE
XXVII. THE INSURRECTION IN HERZEGOVINA
XXVIII. A JOURNEY IN MONTENEGRO AND ALBANIA
XXIX. WAR CORRESPONDENCE AT RAGUSA
XXX. THE WAR OF 1876
XXXI. RUSSIAN INTERVENTION AND THE CAMPAIGN OF
1877
XXXII. A JOURNEY INTO THE BERDAS
XXXIII. THE TAKING OF NIKSICH
XXXIV. MORATSHA
XXXV. THE LEVANT AGAIN
XXXVI. GREEK BROILS--TRICOUPI--FLORENCE
XXXVII. THE BLOCKADE OF GREECE
XXXVIII. CRISPI--A SECRET-SERVICE
MISSION--MONTENEGRO REVISITED
XXXIX. ITALIAN POLITICS
XL. ADOWAH AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

CHAPTER XX
CONSULAR LIFE IN CRETE
Cholera was raging all over the Levant, and there was no direct
communication with any Turkish port without passing through
quarantine. In the uncertainty as to getting to my new post by any route,
I decided to leave my wife and boy at Rome, with a newcomer,--our
Lisa, then two or three months old,--and go on an exploring excursion.
Providing myself with a photographic apparatus, I took steamer at
Civita Vecchia for Peiraeus. Arrived at Athens I found that no regular
communication with any Turkish port was possible, and that the
steamers to Crete had been withdrawn, though there had not been,

either at that or at any previous time, a case of cholera in Crete; but
such was the panic prevailing in Greece that absolute non-intercourse
with the island and the Turkish empire had been insisted on by the
population. People thought I might get a chance at Syra to run over by
a sailing-boat, so I went to Syra. But no boat would go to Crete,
because the quarantine on the return was not merely rigorous but
merciless, and exaggerate to an incredible severity. No boat or steamer
was admitted to enter the port coming from any Turkish or Egyptian
port, though with a perfectly clean bill of health, and all ships must
make their quarantine at the uninhabited island of Delos. Such was the
panic that no one would venture to carry provisions to that island while
there was a ship in quarantine, and during the fortnight I waited at Syra
an English steamer without passengers, and with a clean bill of health,
having finished her term, was condemned to make another term of two
weeks, because a steamer had come in with refugees from Alexandria,
and had anchored in the same roadstead. Mr. Lloyd, the English consul,
protested and insisted on the steamer being released, and the people
threatened to burn his house over his head if he persisted; but, as he did
persist, the ship was finally permitted to communicate with Syra, but
not to enter the harbor, and was obliged to leave without discharging or
taking cargo, after being a month in quarantine.
At last an English gentleman named Rogers, who lived at Syra, an
ex-officer of the English army, offered to carry me over to Canea on his
yacht of twelve tons, and take the consequences. I found the consulate,
like the position in Rome, deserted, the late consul having been a
Confederate who had gone home to enlist, I suppose, for he had been
gone a long time, and the archives did not exist. There was nothing to
take over but a flag, which the vice-consul, a Smyrniote Greek, and an
honest one, as I was glad to find, but who knew nothing of the business
of a consul, had been hoisting on all fête days for two or three years,
waiting for a consul to come. I was received with great festivity by my
protégés, the family of the vice-consul, and with great ceremony by the
pasha, a renegade Greek, educated in medicine by the Sultana Valide,
and in the enjoyment of her high protection; an unscrupulous scoundrel,
who had grafted on his Greek duplicity all the worst traits of the Turk.
As, with the exception of the Italian consul, Sig. Colucci, not one of the

persons with whom I acted or came