suffocate you. It is of value in making matches, gunpowder, and medicines, and in many kinds of manufactures.

We saw some sulphur in the volcanoes we visited during our tour of the Pacific. There are also sulphur mines here and there in the earth. Mount Etna sometimes vomits forth sulphur mixed with its lava, but the chief supplies of Sicilian sulphur come from sulphur mines far away from the volcano. The sulphur lies in veins in the earth. It is dug out by men and boys, just as our people mine coal. The ore is carried to the surface, and then smelted or otherwise treated to remove the impurities, after which it is shipped to different parts of the world.

A

49.

MALTA AND THE GRECIAN ISLES

FEW hours by steamer from Sicily bring us to Malta, a rocky little island with smaller islands about it, belonging to Great Britain. Malta itself is only nine miles wide and twenty miles long, but it is valuable because of its excellent harbor at Valetta, and because it lies almost midway on the route from the Strait of Gibraltar through the Mediterranean Sea to the Suez Canal.

As we see the island from our steamer, it appears to be without vegetation. The fields are inclosed in stone walls, the hills are terraced with stones, and it is only where the orange, lemon, and olive trees stand out above the walls that green is to be seen.

There are many ships at the wharves of Valetta; and we make our way through a crowd of Italians, English, Turks, Greeks, and sailors from everywhere, up the steep

streets to the main part of the city. We go along the Strada Reale, the best business street, looking at the beautiful Maltese lace in the show windows, and at the silver filigree work which might almost be called lace in silver.

We take donkeys and ride out to spend a day with the peasants. They have small farms surrounded by stone walls which prevent

the land from washing

away, and also serve to keep out the robbers. They live in little houses built of stone, with flat roofs and rough doors and windows. They cook upon charcoal brasiers, and their food is scanty and plain. The peasants seldom have meat; they live mainly on brown bread, macaroni, olive oil, and goat's milk

cheese, and sometimes fish and fruit.

They go to work early, but rest a couple of hours in the middle of the day, and always take a nap after dinner.

The people are everywhere busy, but they are generally ready to stop and chat with us through our interpreter. The men are in their shirt sleeves; they wear trousers of coarse blue cotton, and most of them are barefooted. The women dress just as simply, having coarse dresses with hoodlike mantles which reach to the waist.

Our donkeys are excellent, and they trot as fast as ponies. The air from the sea is fresh and cool, and we enjoy ourselves as we ride from one little farm to another, now stopping to eat the blood-red oranges common to Malta, and now drinking a glass of warm milk fresh from the goat.

Malta is noted for its goats. They are excellent milking animals, some giving as much as a quart daily. Every morning the goats are brought from the country into the towns and milked at the doors of the customers.

From Valetta we take ship for the Ionian Islands, off the western and southern coasts of Greece, calling first at Zante, not far from the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth.

The Ionian Islands are many in number, and seven of them are of some importance. They have all together an area not much larger than the area of Rhode Island, and their population is little more than two hundred thousand. Only one third of them are Greeks, the others being Jews and people of the mixed races from the countries about.

The skies of Greece are wonderfully clear, the climate is delightful, and the soil is so fertile that oranges, lemons, grapes, and other kinds of fruits grow luxuriantly. Upon the island of Zante there are great vineyards devoted to Zante currants, a seedless grape which is dried and shipped all over the world. It is sold in almost every grocery store, and we have often eaten it in cakes and plum puddings.

From Zante we go north to Corfu, an island noted for its beauty, and then move around the southern coast of Greece to the archipelago in the Ægean Sea.

This archipelago consists of many small volcanic islands,

of which some are little more than rocks of white marble; some are almost barren, and others have olive orchards and vineyards built in terraces on the sides of the hills. The people live in little flat-roofed houses painted white. They are mostly Greeks, or of the mixed race found in this region, many of them being sailors and fishermen. Some of these islands belong to Turkey, having a population more or less Mohammedan, while those nearest Greece are inhabited chiefly by Christians of the Greek Catholic Church.

50. CRETE, RHODES, AND CYPRUS

OASTING southward, we call at Crete, over which Turkey claims a limited authority; but Crete is practically an independent state, which is now governed by the crown prince of Greece. It is a long, narrow island, with a chain of mountains running through its middle, Mount Ida, in the center, being two thousand feet higher than Mount Washington.

The mountains of Crete have numerous caves, including one on the slope of Mount Ida in which the ancient Greeks supposed the Minotaur lived. This was a terrible monster with a human body and the head of a bull, which, according to tradition, ate nothing but human flesh. Every year, so the story goes, the king of Crete compelled Athens to send seven boys and seven girls to be fed to this monster, and this continued until a brave young prince, named Theseus, came here and fought the Minotaur and cut off his head. We call at the town of Candia, on the northern coast.

OUR COLONIES — 19

The people are much like those we saw in the Grecian islands. They have oval faces, pointed chins, and dark, rosy cheeks. Many of the men wear white shirts, blue waistcoats, and long boots, with their trousers gathered in at the knees. Some have red fez caps, and others wear hoods. The chief business of Crete is farming and fruit raising, the principal products being olives, oranges, lemons, and wines.

Leaving Candia, we next call at Rhodes, where we get a ship which takes us to Cyprus, at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. Rhodes has been a very important island in the past, and it was once a great commercial center, having trade with Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, and other parts of Europe. Its capital, the famous city of Rhodes, at its northern end, was in ancient times one of the finest cities of the world, noted for its schools and culture. To-day the island belongs to Turkey. It is governed by a pasha, and is comparatively poor. The great city of the past has disappeared, and in its place is a town of about thirty thousand people, made up of Greeks, Turks, Armenians, and Jews. The island is mountainous, with many well-watered valleys. It produces wine, wax, honey, lemons, oranges, and figs, and has some manufactures of silks.

It was upon Rhodes that the famed Colossus stood. This was a statue as high as a country church steeple, put up to the god of the sun, in honor of the successful defense of Rhodes, about three hundred years before Christ. The people erected it at the entrance of the port, so that it was seen by ships coming in, just as the great Statue of Liberty is seen in the harbor of New York.