precipices of the Acheron. Their position was hopeless; but the fierce eloquence of Samuel, the warrior-monk, inflamed their heroism, and when the worst came to the worst they preferred destruction to surrender. As the Pasha's soldiery scaled the last Suliote stronghold, Samuel and his devoted band retired slowly before them, fighting inch by inch; and when the last retrenchment had been stormed by sheer weight of numbers, a fearful explosion involved in the same ruin both victors and vanquished. Samuel had with his own hand laid the lighted match to the powder-magazine. Meanwhile the Suliote women had escaped on to the rocks which overhang the Acheron; and when the report of the explosion announced the final disaster, it is told that they raised their voices in a last chant of desperate triumph, and taking their children in their arms, flung themselves headlong over the precipice into the dark waters of the River of Death.

Seventy-seven years have passed since this awful tragedy was consummated, and a few blackened vaults overgrown with wild mountain shrubs alone mark these scenes of woe. Solitu

dinem faciunt, pacem appellant. The shrill note of a bird of prey, or the harsh voice of the sentinel on the battlements of the Turkish fortress, alone disturbs the peace which nature sheds over the theatre of man's worst as well as noblest deeds. The calm of evening rested on the wide and varied landscape unrolled before our eyes. To the left of the southern chain of Suli, which rose immediately opposite to us, separated from the central ridge only by the deep chasm of the Acheron, lay the broad Ambracian Gulf backed by the distant peaks of Acarnania, and to its right the placid waters of the Adriatic, with Paxos and Antipaxos reposing on their bosom. But behind us heavy storm-clouds had enveloped the higher ridge of Suli, and the muttering of thunder bade us hie back to our night's quarters.

Nor did these turn out so comfortless as might have been expected from their external appearance; and besides, was not the fact of sleeping under the roof of the last of the Suliotes worth some slight measure of discomfort? How they had managed to escape the destruction which had overtaken the rest of their race

was a question to which I failed to elicit a satisfactory reply. The three men who with their families tenanted the two small cabins, were the sons of two Suliote brothers who had borne a part in the tragical events of 1803, though what that part exactly was, they seemed either unable or unwilling to tell. All they knew, they said, was that their fathers rendered a great service to Ali Pasha; and that when the final catastrophe came, their lives, and those of a few women and children who had sought refuge in their house, were spared by the conqueror. They themselves had wedded their cousins, for Providence had kindly provided that each of the children of one of the original survivors could be mated with one of the other's children, and the numerous offspring with which the various couples had already been blessed, allowed one to hope that the race might yet sprout up to new and vigorous life. Though remnants of the Suliotes are still to be found scattered about the Peloponnesus and other parts of the Hellenic kingdom, they have lost by intermarriage with others that purity of breed which, it is said, enabled them to preserve

down into modern times the perfect beauty of the Grecian type. And certainly both men and women in these humble hovels were worthy of their ancestors' high renown; the men, tall and powerfully built, with strongly marked faces, in which the deep lines and weather-beaten complexion, and shaggy beards and long dishevelled hair, rather enhanced than marred the bold sharply defined features. The women, more worn even than the men by toil and hardships, still bore witness to their high descent; and one young girl, who had only been recently married to the youngest of the three brothers, might well have stood for Milo's Venus, whether you looked at the graceful athletic figure, the delicate joints of hands and feet, the swelling bosom, the slope of the shoulders, and the small perfectly poised head, or at the classical features of the oval face. Nor were these charms unbecomingly set off by the peasant girl's simple dress a small red fez, secured by a plait of hair wound round it, and fastened with a silver pin; a bodice of coarse blue cloth trimmed with red embroidered work, and a short petticoat of the same stuff, open down the front, but

covered with a red apron, and leggings of quaint-coloured worsted down to the ankles. It was a curious group that gathered round the large blazing hearth, while the wind and storm were beating against the mountain-side. In the corner an old woman in her dotage, the grand-aunt of the family, who had witnessed with her own eyes the days of the "great trouble;" beside her five small children, confused bundles of picturesque rags, with bright eager faces and curly heads; and crouching opposite to the fire, while their wives stood spinning behind them, the three fierce-looking highlanders, whose eyes gleamed with the double light of the reflected flames and their own enthusiasm, as they recalled for the strangers' benefit the memories of bygone times when their fathers were the lords of the soil which they now tilled as hired bondsmen and when the wind howled more wildly, or the thunder crashed more loudly, they would stop for a moment to cross themselves devoutly, and mutter a prayer for the souls of the Suliotes "who were about." Presently, when the storm lulled, all the grown-up members of the family retired to