Hawes, Charles H.; Hawes, Harriet B.: Crete, the forerunner of Greece (London, 1909)

CRETE THE FORERUNNER
OF GREECE

INTRODUCTION

THE island of Crete, known to the Venetians as
Candia, has lain for about three thousand
years out of the main line of traffic. In fact, when
the prehistoric fleets of Crete, the first maritime
power of the Mediterranean, gave place to Phoe-
nician craft, the island ceased at once to be the gate-
way for commerce between Egypt and the European
ports of the Adriatic, the Gulf of Salonica, and
the Black Sea. To-day the stream of traffic
hurries east and west, and the impatient traveller
bound for the Indies, Cathay, or the antipodes, is
lucky if he catches a distant glimpse of the snow-
peaks of Crete.

It seems strange that so beautiful an island, the
scene of successive invasions in the past, should
have escaped the inroad of the ubiquitous nine-
teenth-century tourist. The reasons for this were
several—the presence of alien Turkish rulers, the
frequent revolutions of their subjects, the in-
sufficiency and uncertainty of connections, and
the lack of decent accommodations. That the
island is becoming known at all is due in the main
to archaeologists and the ' Cretan Question,'