that was fought by that intrepid chief. The safe escape of Chemaros, however, was owing to the length of his legs, rather than to the thickness of his hide, and he seemed to have been preserved in order to become a trial to our patience. He seldom lost the road, which was almost of hourly occurrence, without my being disposed to bless the Turks who had left him alive. About four o'clock in the afternoon, we began to descend the hills, at the foot of which spread the fertile and beautiful plain of Epactus, which is not only the largest, but the richest body of land that borders upon the northern shores of the gulf. Its green fields and frowning castles acted upon us like a charm, and we descended towards it with renewed strength. There was but little cultivation, and the ruins of villages were the only remnants of its former prosperity; but the fields were matted with rich verdure, and the thickets which served for hedges were of myrtles and olianders, which, even at this late season, 5th of October, were full of flowers and fragrance. CHAPTER XIV. EPACTUS. On the other side of Morno we placed ourselves under the guidance of an Arab, and shortly after reached the gates of the castle, which, at a distance, appeared to be in far better condition than it really was. The town and castle of Epactus having remained in the hands of the Turks through the continuance of the revolution, escaped the fate of other cities; and, like Chalcis, preserved externally many of the features which render a Turkish city so striking, and so beautiful an object. The walls, with their towers and battlements, were still standing, and the plane and cypress trees still shaded the fountain and waved by the side of the minaret; but alas! where were its old inhabitants? After a long siege, they were at length obliged to surrender, and-what was still more painful -compelled to give up their Christian slaves. This was only in favour of those who were willing to leave their lords voluntarily; and in order to render this step less offensive and more sure of success, the examination was deferred till after the embarkation of the inhabitants and the garrison on board the Greek vessels, at which time each of the Greek slaves was acquainted with the conditions of the stipulations. The boon of freedom was too tempting to be resisted; and when the chief beauty in the harem of the Kior Pasha threw off her veil, and invited her attendants to follow her example, the haughty Turk was beside himself. He tore from her person the costly jewels he had given her, and had he the power, he would have condemned her to the sack; but his day was over;-his beautiful slave was free! Epactus, however, though a very excellent locale for the scene of a romance, was hardly fit for scenes of real life;-it offered no comforts and no accommodations. We attempted to secure lodgings in some of the khans in the suburbs, but we could find no tenable corner in any of them ; even the little shell with which we were provided through the instrumentality of the Demark, within the walls of the city, was as wretched a concern as can well be imagined ;-its very appearance was a damper; for besides being very dirty, it was so very narrow that it required the most mathematical precision in the adjustment of our bodies. I was just beginning to moralize on the pleasures of travelling, w en Mr. D. B., the son of Nota, and the nephew of Marco Botzaris, entered our room, and after introducing himself, took us via et armis to his quarters. The miserable streets through which we passed in our way to our friend's house and the appearance of his comrades promised us no great things; still our condition could not be made worse; and I was sure that if we gained nothing else by the change, we would at least have some insight into the manners and the habits of the "dark Suliotes;" to my surprise, however, our host conducted us into a palace, which, though somewhat delapidated, had not lost its fountains or its airy kiosks. The spacious oda into which we were introduced was of itself a relic; it had no less than twentyeight windows, the upper row of which being out of reach, had preserved the greater portion of their stained glass; the gilt and the painting of the lofty ceilings had lost much of their freshness, but the carvings of the wood-work, together with the light and fantastic ornaments, had preserved not only the peculiarities of the Turkish architecture, but an air of Barbaric magnificence. The days when its tapestry was embroidered with "Soft Persian sentences in lilac letters " had passed, and the places of the luxuriant Ottomans were vacant, still there was enough of it to show me that it was the divan of the harem. I had. been in some of these secluded nests of Turkish jealousy, and could easily fill up the places which were 15 once occupied by the toilets and the costly decorations of its iumates. But the inmates themselves; the bright Lielahs, that formed the life and the light of the harem, had deserted their jasmine bowers, and the whole fabric, spite of my efforts to re-people it, looked so lonely, and so desolate as to recall to mind the following requiem of Turkish magnificence: "The steed is vanished from the stall- The owl usurps the beacon tower." with the exception of the spacious oda and the fountain, with the orange trees that still bloomed over it, the rest of the building, its rooms, corridors, piazzas, halls, towers, heavy arched gates and light kiosks, had assumed such threatening positions and bending attitudes, that none but the heroes of Missolonghi could look upon them without apprehension and dismay. In the course of the night, the wind and rain rocked us right nicely; every now and then we were startled by successive crashes in some distant part of the town; on one occasion a part of the light harem gave way, and our chamber, "the beacon-tower," shook to its very centre. Our friends and host advised us to attempt no sorties so long as there was a tile above |