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the hotel restaurant in the next street but one. The walls are so thin as to seem, on this blustery night, as if their sole purpose were to prevent the contents of the rooms being blown into the streets: positively, it was colder indoors than out. To crown all, every corner of the house was pervaded with that stench which of all others is least endurable by civilised nostrils.

However, it was no use showing peevishness under the inevitable; to do so would be in discreditable contrast with the unfailing good-humour of the townspeople of all classes—whether Greeks or Turks. The only thing to do was to keep on every available wrap, and get dinner at the restaurant, where English travellers are sufficiently rare to ensure for us curious but respectful attention. It was fairly warm in the dining-saloon, though everybody, including a party of Greek officers, dined in their greatcoats.

After dinner we were slow in turning out to face the frosty gale, and, preceded by a porter carrying n Chinese lantern, struggled back through filth ankle-deep to the Hotel of Olympus. Without the heading of that kindly light it would hardly have been possible to thread the miry labyrinth, for gas is of course unknown in Larissa, and as petroleum lamps are few and very far between, even in the main street, the darkling wayfarer may easily find himself up to his middle in a muck-heap, or heels over head in one of the pits dug for the trees with which the municipality propose to adorn the πλατεία or principal square. The old town law, making it penal to move about after dark without a lantern, has lately been repealed; but in fact nearly every one carries a coloured paper lantern for his own safety, and the effect of the dancing lights is very pretty.

An important ceremony awaited us before we got to bed. The kind consideration of the Government at Athens had caused our approach to be announced to the Demarch or Préfet of Larissa by telegram. The message had been sent from Volo before we left that town, but was delivered in Larissa some time after our arrival. The Demarch, much concerned that we had not been received with more attention, came to explain the circumstances. It was, it seems, the Feast of St John; the telegraph clerk at Larissa was named John: he had been celebrating the festival of his eponymus not wisely, but too well;—in fact—rarest of all misdemeanours in Greece he had got very drunk. The Demarch was profuse in expressing his chagrin; and his purpose of retribution on the delinquent was rendered to us by the interpreter to the effect that poor John "would be stopped for one—two months, and perhaps, in the end, thrown away altogether! " We entertained some hope that, inasmuch as "John" is the only man within many miles of Larissa who can transmit or receive telegrams, his services will, by this time, have been found indispensable.

Things wore a brighter aspect next morning. The rain had stopped: it was as cold as ever, but the wind was busy drying up the streets.

Larissa is in a very interesting state of transition. For centuries the city and the magnificent province of Thessaly, of which it is the capital, slumbered and groaned in its slumber under Turkish misrule, till it was ceded to Greece in 1881 under the Treaty of Berlin. It is the only part of that kingdom