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Team
1901
[Illustration: W. Stillman]
Cholera was raging all over the Levant, and there was no directcommunication with any Turkish port without passing throughquarantine. In the uncertainty as to getting to my new post byany route, I decided to leave my wife and boy at Rome, with anewcomer,—our Lisa, then two or three months old,—and go on anexploring excursion. Providing myself with a photographic apparatus, Itook steamer at Civita Vecchia for Peiraeus. Arrived at Athens I foundthat no regular communication with any Turkish port was possible, andthat the steamers to Crete had been withdrawn, though there had notbeen, either at that or at any previous time, a case of cholera inCrete; but such was the panic prevailing in Greece that absolutenon-intercourse with the island and the Turkish empire had beeninsisted on by the population. People thought I might get a chance atSyra to run over by a sailing-boat, so I went to Syra. But no boatwould go to Crete, because the quarantine on the return was not merelyrigorous but merciless, and exaggerate to an incredible severity. Noboat or steamer was admitted to enter the port coming from any Turkishor Egyptian port, though with a perfectly clean bill of health, andall ships must make their quarantine at the uninhabited islandof Delos. Such was the panic that no one would venture to carryprovisions to that island while there was a ship in quarantine, andduring the fortnight I waited at Syra an English steamer withoutpassengers, and with a clean bill of health, having finished her term,was condemned to make another term of two weeks, because a steamer hadcome in with refugees from Alexandria, and had anchored in the sameroadstead. Mr. Lloyd, the English consul, protested and insisted onthe steamer being released, and the people threatened to burn hishouse over his head if he persisted; but, as he did persist, the shipwas finally permitted to communicate with Syra, but not to enter theharbor, and was obliged to leave without discharging or taking cargo,after being a mo