I always liked a good fight in a good cause, and I had no hesitation in taking up the glove that Ismael threw down, and my defiance of all his petty hostile manoeuvres was immediately observed by the acute islanders and put down to my credit and exaltation in the popular opinion.

The discontent against his measures was profound, and the winter of my first year in the island was one of great distress.

Ismael had laid new and illegal taxes on straw, wine, all beasts of burden, which, with oppressive collection of the habitual tithes (levied in accordance not with the actual value of the crops, but with their value as estimated by the officials), and short crops for two years past, made life very hard for the Cretan.

Even this was not enough; justice was administered with scandalous venality and disregard of the existing laws and procedure.

Not long after my arrival at Canea, the hospital physician, a humane Frenchman, informed me that an old Sphakiot had just died in the prison, where he had been confined for a long time in place of his son, who had been guilty of a vendetta homicide and had escaped to the Greek islands.