Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 May 1877 — A Cretan Town—Its Character and People. [ARTICLE]

A Cretan Town—Its Character and People.

The town or Kli&nta Is entirely Inclosed wi 'tin fortifications, wuich remain fust aa they were left by the Venetians—powerful works in those days; but now the great exposed masonry-scraps would fall to pieces at the assault of modern artillery. The deep and wide ditch forma the vcgetablo garden of the town. As we enter hy the main land gate, that through which passes the road to Soda Bay, we find ourselves at once in a busy scene, almost completely Oriental. A street of shops, filled with buyers.and sellers, leads us through the open market-place down to the water gate. The Mussulnmn shop, keepers sit cross-legged in theiropen shopfronts, while the noisy crowd oi peasants, Zapties, soldiers and women bargains for its needs. At tho street corners sit the money changers, with their tables and boxes of money before them. Conspicuous among the objects for sale are the long boots of yellow leather worn by the peasants, for which Crete has teen famous ever since the days of Qalen, and short cloaks of the pattern described by Aristophanes. If we wander otf in the main street, we are at once lost in a maze of streets, or rather passages, for they arc scarcely six feet wide, between the tall stone houses. There is an air of comfort and substantiality about the town that few Oriental cities possess, owing to its having these solid stone buildings, instead of houses built only of sun-baked brick. We make our way to the ramparts, and work round the port to the projecting bastion which forms one side of the entrance to the harbor. Here stand upon old carriages tottering to pieces and scarcely able to bear the weight, Turkish and Venetian bronze guns of great size, and of those graceful forms and that bright green color which have disappeared in our- ugly monsters of iron. The cannon founders of those days were proud of the guns they made, ana ornamented them with many a scroll and quaint device; while mottoes-of valoi on the Venetian, verses from the Koran on the Turkish guns, mark the age when war has not yet become the practical and nnpoetic task in which the soldier and the sailor are fast becoming subordinated to the chemist and the mechanic. No one interferes with us as we stroll round the ramparts, and note that, however worthless against a formal bombardment, they are stiii a complete defence against any possible attack of insurgents not possessing artilleiy. From the southwest comer of the ramparts we notice a small village just outside of the walls—a cluster of huts, isolated, alone, desolate. Interested in what we hear, we pay it a visit. It is a leper villuge, and, as we enter, the unfortunate wretches beg for help, stretching out their awfully distorted limbs to move our pity. Each district in the island has a place set apart for its lepers, leprosy being a common disease. Whence its origin, what its source, we know not. Tho natives look on it with dread and believe it to be contagious. And so the wretched lepers are outcasts —herd together, marry and breed leper children.. The first signs of the fatal spot is enough; the victim is at once thrust out to the leper’s den, in spite of youth, position or beauty. No attempt is made to cure the disease; no lepers’ hospital has ever been established. The people sit still under their curse and never attempt to call in the aid of science—as though they were yet living in the darkest blackness of iheDark Ages.—Blackwood's Magazine.