sangars, bearing witness to the fighting that took place here against the Turks in 1820.

About this time I attached to my personal staff an individual called Vassili, said to be a mighty hunter. He may have been only unlucky during these days, but his method of circumventing the ibex in no way commended itself to me. It was as follows: He would start off to walk at top speed up and down hill, talking volubly but incomprehensibly at the top of his voice. Having walked me off my legs, he would leave me to rest on a mamelon and start off alone to some distant peak, occasionally pausing to fire a random shot down a gorge or into a patch of bushes. At the top of the hill he would light a fire, presumably to show that he had been there, and then stalk off to another hill-top and repeat the operation. If this is the universal method, it would fully account for the agrimia still existing in such a limited area.

Although we were often able to hear the goats clattering along the rocks, evidently in full view, we were never able to pick them up with the glass. Their colour is identically that of the rocks, and the ground is so broken that the moment they lie down they are lost to sight. On one occasion we thought that we had really circumvented a buck that had been skipping along an apparently impassable face of rock to a bush in the middle of it, where he lay down. We posted ourselves so that escape for him seemed impossible, and sent the men round. They drove the ground carefully, eventually reaching a spot immediately above his lair and hurling down rocks from the top. He, however, showed no signs of life, and the only result of the manœuvre was to nearly frighten one of the party out of his seven senses. He had taken up a position straight below the ibex, and the stones hurled down by the heaters gathered other stones in their course, and by the time they reached my friend had formed small avalanches which hurtled over his head, and it was only by flattening himself against the rock that he avoided instant annihilation.

After this last disappointment we decided to abandon the pursuit and to leave for home after an expedition down the valley. The lower portion of the valley is even more majestic than the upper; the walls of rock close in till they form a canyon not more than a hundred yards wide. This runs right down to the sea where lies the little village of Rumeli. The mouth of the valley is just opposite to the island of Gavdo, well known to all who have travelled by the P. and O. The south coast has no harbours, only open roadsteads with bad anchorage, and the fishing industry is nil.

Turning our backs on the valley, we again faced the Xiloskala and reached Omalos in the evening, to find that someone, presumably the discharged cook, had broken open different articles of baggage and helped himself to various useful trifles and food. The men

left behind denied any knowledge of the theft, but it was difficult to reconcile their statements with the fact that on our unexpected entry into the hut they were discovered in the act of eating' Sardines de luxe.'

Next morning we had great difficulty in getting started, what with refractory mules and exorbitant demands on the part of the men. One mule pannier could not be locked, and we noticed that the man in charge hurried on in a most unaccountable manner. This aroused my suspicion, so I hurried on and caught him up suddenly in a hollow way, where he was in the act of unloading the mule with the evident object of helping himself. The men showed a strong inclination to stop at Lakhos, which was overcome with some little trouble-after which every wine-shop on the road claimed their attention, and it was late before they got into Canea. We walked down in a leisurely way, stopping at a little village called Fourné for some excellent coffee and oranges. Here we hired horses and jogged into town in the evening.

It is a mistake for anyone travelling in Crete to take a lot of supplies from home or from Athens. A few tinned provisions for an emergency are sufficient. Wine costs about three-halfpence a bottle and is very drinkable and wholesome, though light. Vegetables can always be got, also lamb, very cheap. Eggs are a drug in the market, as the villages abound with fowls. Tea, coffee, and sugar (which will always be stolen if left open) must be taken out. The rustic natives, both Moslem and Orthodox Church, are not so black as they are painted; it is the town-dwellers, of whom our servants afforded a fair type, who are the black sheep and who have gained for this fertile and beautiful little island the reputation earned by it in the days of St. Paul and sustained without intermission to the present day.

H. C. LOWTHER.

THE SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN QUESTION

AND ITS PLACE IN HISTORY1

[The subjoined article has been submitted to and approved by the highest possible authority upon the facts, who vouches for the correctness of this version of them.-Ed. NINETEENTH CENTURY.]

THE Schleswig-Holstein question, after being for many years the bugbear of newspaper writers and newspaper readers, has now entered into a new phase. It has become an important chapter in the history of Europe, which can never be neglected by any historian, for there can be no doubt that without the initiative taken by Duke Frederick and the people of Schleswig-Holstein the great events of the second half of our century, the war between Prussia and Austria, and the subsequent war between Germany and France, would never have taken place, at all events not under the very peculiar circumstances in which they actually took place. The name of Zündhölzchen, lucifer match, given at the time to Schleswig-Holstein, has proved very true, though the conflagration which it caused has been far greater than could have been foreseen at the time. A well-known English statesman, of keener foresight than Lord Palmerston, said in 1878, 'If Germany were to awake, let us take care that it does not find so splendid a horse ready to ride as the Holstein grievance.'

The facts which constituted that grievance, which at one time seemed hopelessly involved, are now as clear as daylight. The most recent book on the subject, Schleswig-Holsteins Befreiung, by Jansen and Samwer, 1897, leaves nothing to be desired as to clearness and completeness. It is entirely founded on authentic documents, many of them now published for the first time. It furnishes us with some new and startling information, as may be seen from a mere glance at the table of contents. We find letters signed by King William of Prussia, afterwards German Emperor, by his son the Crown Prince, afterwards Emperor Frederick, by the Duke Frederick of SchleswigHolstein, and by some of the leading statesmen of the time. Some

'Schleswig-Holsteins Befreiung. Herausgegeben aus dem Nachlass des Professors Karl Jansen und ergänzt von Karl Samwer (Wiesbaden, 1897).

of these documents admit, no doubt, of different interpretations, nor is it likely that the controversy so long carried on by eminent diplomatists will cease now that the whole question has entered into the more serene atmosphere of historical research. Historians continue to differ about the real causes of the War of the Spanish Succession, or of the Seven Years' War, and it is not likely that a Danish historian will ever lie down by the side of a German historian of the Schleswig-Holstein war, like the lamb by the side of the lion. The Schleswig-Holstein question is indeed one which seems expressly made for the exercise of diplomatic ingenuity, and it is but natural that it should have become a stock question in the examinations of candidates for the diplomatic service. What was supposed to be, or at all events represented to be, an insoluble tangle, is now expected to be handled and disentangled quite freely by every young aspirant to diplomatic employment, and many of them seem to acquit themselves very creditably in explaining the origin and all the bearings of the once famous Schleswig-Holstein question, and laying bare the different interests involved in it.

These conflicting interests were no doubt numerous, yet no more so than in many a lawsuit about a contested inheritance which any experienced solicitor would have to get up in a very short time. The chief parties concerned in the conflict were Denmark, the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein, of which Holstein belonged to the German Confederation, the German Confederation itself, and more particularly its principal member and afterwards its only survivor, Prussia, nay as a distant claimant, even though never very serious, Russia, and as one of the signatories of the Treaty of London (May 8, 1852) England also.

This Treaty of London gives in fact the key to the whole question. It seemed a very simple and wise expedient for removing all complications which were likely to arise between Denmark and Germany, but it created far more difficulties than it removed. It was meant to remove all dangers that threatened the integrity of the kingdom of Denmark. But what was the meaning of this diplomatic phrase?

The kingdom of Denmark in its integrity comprised the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, because in 1460 Count Christian of Oldenburg, who had been raised to the throne of Denmark, was chosen by the Estates of Schleswig and Holstein to be their Duke— by which act Denmark came into direct personal union with the Duchies; these latter were never to be separated from one another. In 1660, Frederick the Third of Denmark upset, with the help of the burghers and by force, the constitution of his country. Instead of the right of Election continuing as heretofore, Denmark became a Hereditary Kingdom, and it was left to the King to form a constitution and settle the Law of Succession. In consequence of this the Royal Edict (the Lex Regia) of the 15th of November, 1665, was published by Frederick the Third of Denmark. It secured to the descend

ants of that King (not of those of the other branches of the House of Oldenburg) the succession in Denmark and Norway. If the male descendants of Frederick the Third became extinct, then the female descendants of this King were called upon to succeed in Denmark and Norway; whilst in Schleswig-Holstein the rights of succession remained to the male descendants of Christian the First. As all female descendants were thus excluded from the ducal throne of Schleswig-Holstein, it was evident that after the death of King Frederick the Seventh, who had no sons, the two Duchies would inevitably be lost to Denmark and fall to the nearest male agnate—that is, to the Duke Christian August of Schleswig-Holstein Augustenburg— and thus become, under a German prince, part and parcel of the German Confederation. Danish statesmen deemed it expedient to retain the Duchies for Denmark-above all to separate Schleswig from Holstein, and incorporate it into the kingdom-although the Act of Union of 1460, and documents such as the 'Letters of Freedom' of Kiel and Ripen, pronounced any such step to be the greatest injustice towards the Duchies and the princely House of Augustenburg. Even should these old documents be regarded in the nineteenth century as mere mediæval curiosities, still the Salic Law has hitherto been recognised in all civilised states-for instance, in England. In Hanover the Salic Law prevailed; in England it did not. What would the world have said if after the death of William the Fourth the English Parliament had declared that for the sake of preserving the integrity of the United Kingdom it was necessary that Hanover should for ever remain united with England? Such an act would have constituted a breach of the law, a defiance of the German Confederation of which Hanover, like Holstein-for Schleswig did not form a part of the German Confederation-was a member, and spoliation of the Duke of Cumberland as the legitimate successor to the throne of Hanover. Exactly the same applies to the act contemplated by the King of Denmark in 1848, and no amount of special pleading has ever been able to obscure these simple outlines of the so-called SchleswigHolstein question. The claims of the other Oldenburg line were second only to those of the Schleswig-Holstein Augustenburg line, and Russia was hardly in earnest in urging them at a later time in the development of the actual crisis. Besides, the Oldenburg claimant put forward by Russia would never have accepted the two Duchies except as a German sovereign. Schleswig did not belong to the German Confederation.

Whatever Bismarck's views and the views of the Prussian Government may have been in later times, at that early stage the King of Prussia, King Frederick William the Fourth, declared in the clearest words, in a letter addressed to the Duke Christian August of Schleswig-Holstein Augustenburg, that he recognised the two Duchies as independent and closely united principalities, and as the right