Heroes of the Telegraph

The following extracts from letters to his wife will illustrate the nature of the work, and also give an idea of Jenkin's clear and graphic style of correspondence:--May 14.--'Syra is semi-eastern. The pavement, huge shapeless blocks sloping to a central gutter; from this base two-storeyed houses, sometimes plaster, many-coloured, sometimes rough-hewn marble, rise, dirty and ill-finished, to straight, plain, flat roofs; shops guiltless of windows, with signs in Greek letters; dogs, Greeks in blue, baggy, Zouave breeches and a fez, a few narghilehs, and a sprinkling of the ordinary continental shop-boys. In the evening I tried one more walk in Syra with A----, but in vain endeavoured to amuse myself or to spend money, the first effort resulting in singing DOODAH to a passing Greek or two, the second in spending--no, in making A---- spend--threepence on coffee for three.' Canea Bay, in Candia (or Crete), which they reached on May 16, appeared to Jenkin one of the loveliest sights that man could witness. May 23.--'I spent the day at the little station where the cable was landed, which has apparently been first a Venetian monastery and then a Turkish mosque. At any rate the big dome is very cool, and the little ones hold batteries capitally. A handsome young Bashi-Bazouk guards it, and a still handsomer mountaineer is the servant; so I draw them and the monastery and the hill till I'm black in the face with heat, and come on board to hear the Canea cable is still bad.'