The
commission for the delimitation, at the head of which was General
Hamley, met at Athens with the intention of beginning the trace from
the Epirote side, and I had made all my preparations for accompanying
it, when there happened one of those curious mischances which are
possible only in the East. The summer was hot and dry, and the mayor
of Athens, foreseeing a drought, had decided to turn the stream known
as the "washerwoman's brook," one of the few perennial sources in the
vicinity, into the aqueduct which supplied the city with drinking
water. As all the dirty clothes of Athens, comprising those of the
military hospital, in which there were grave cases of typhoid, were
washed in that stream, the consequences were soon evident in a great
outbreak of the malady in the city, the victims being estimated at
10,000 persons; and, two days before that on which the commission was
to start on its work, I was taken ill. I sent for a doctor and he
declared the illness to be fever, and probably typhoid. I went to bed,
and took for three days in succession forty grains of quinine a day,
getting up on the fourth, to find the commission gone and myself in no
condition to follow it; and so I missed the most interesting
journey which had ever offered itself in my journalistic career. My
exasperation at the imbecility of the mayor can be easily imagined,
and it was vented in a proper castigation in my correspondence.
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