The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II | Page 4

flesh and
blood,--a mindless face, but of such exquisite proportion, color, and
sweetness of modeling, with eyes of such lustrous brown, that I did not
lose the vivid image of it, or the ecstatic impression it produced, for
several days; it seemed to be ineradicably impressed on the sensorium
in the same manner as the ecstatic vision I have recorded of my
wood-life. I suppose such beauty to be incompatible with any degree of
mental activity or personal character, for the process of mental
development carries with it a trace of struggle destructive to the
supreme serenity and statuesque repose of the Cretan beauty. Pashley
tells of a similar experience he had in the mountains of Sphakia, and he

was impressed as I was.
On our arrival at the city gates, returning to Retimo, we had an
experience of the mediaeval ways of the island, finding the gates
locked and no guard on duty. We called and summoned,--for a consul
had always the privilege of having the gates opened to him at any hour
of day or night,--but in vain, until I devised a summons louder than our
sticks on the gate, and, taking the hugest stone I could lift, threw it with
all my force repeatedly at the gate, and so aroused the guard, who went
to the governor and got the keys, which were kept under his pillow.
The next day we had an affair with Turkish justice which illustrates the
position of the consuls in Turkey so well that I tell it fully. The
dragoman and I had gone off to shoot rock-pigeons in one of the caves
by the seashore, leaving at home my breech-loading hunting rifle, then
a novelty in that part of the world. When we got home at night the city
was full of a report that some one in our house had shot a Turkish boy
through the body. I at once made an investigation and found that the
facts were that a boy coming to the town, at a distance of about half a
mile from the gate, had been hit by a rifle ball which had struck him in
the chest and gone out at the back. No one had heard a shot, and the
sentinel at our doors, set nominally for honor, but really to watch the
house, had not heard any sound. The boy was in no danger, and he
declared that the bullet had struck him in the back and gone out by the
chest. My Canea dragoman, who was reading in the house all the time
we were gone, had heard nothing and knew nothing about it; but, on
examining the rifle, I found that some one had tried to wipe it out and
had left a rag sticking half way down, the barrel. This pointed to a
solution, and an investigation made the whole thing clear. The
dragoman's man-servant had taken the gun out on the balcony which
looked out on the port, and fired a shot at a white stone on the edge of
the wall, in the direction of the village where the boy was hit.
The kaimakam of Retimo sent an express to Canea to ask Ismael what
he should do, and received reply to prosecute the affair with the utmost
vigor. He therefore summoned the entire household of the dragoman,
except him and myself, to the konak, to be examined. As they were all
under my protection I refused to send them, but offered to make a strict

investigation and tell him the result; but, knowing the rigor of the
Turkish law against a Christian who had wounded a Mussulman, even
unintentionally, I insisted on being the magistrate to sit in the
examination. The pasha declined my offer, and I forbade any one in the
house to go to the konak for examination. I then appeared before the
kaimakam and demanded the evidence on which my house was accused.
There was none except that of the surgeon, who was a Catholic, and a
bigoted enemy of the Greeks, and especially of the dragoman, with
whom he had had litigation. He declared that the shot came from the
direction of the town, while the boy maintained the contrary; and as, in
the direction from which the boy had come, there was a Mussulman
festival, with much firing of guns, I suggested the possibility that the
ball came, as the boy believed, from that direction, and put the surgeon
to a severe cross-examination. I asked him if he had ever seen a
gunshot wound before, and he admitted that he had not. Thereupon I
denounced him to the kaimakam, who had begun to be frightened at the
responsibility he had assumed, and the man broke down and admitted
that he might be mistaken, on which