3-021-233 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Mount Ida, Island of Crete, 1869. 'Our Special Artist, who has gone as far as the Suez Canal works to make sketches of whatever he finds worthy of being illustrated by this Journal along the New Overland Route to India, had an opportunity of seeing the shores of Crete, in his passage from Brindisi to Alexandria...The subject of [the] sketch is the distant view of Mount Ida, with its snow-covered peaks, the weather at this season being very cold, even in the sunny Ionian Sea. Homer's Mount Ida is another mountain, above the reputed site of Troy, in Asia Minor, near the mouth of the Dardanelles. A great fire was seen in the evening on the side of the mountain, not far south of Cape St. John, and several other fires, arranged in a row down the side of a hill, at another place many miles to the south. It was thought by some on board the steam-boat from Brindisi that these fires were signals made by the Cretan insurgents, who had, perhaps, mistaken that vessel for a Greek blockade-runner; but, as it was the eve of Jan. 1, according to the Greek calendar, they were more probably festive bonfires to celebrate the new year'. From "Illustrated London News", 1869.