SHORT TOUR TO THE EAST 55 



quarantine off Ancona, and was landed in the quaran- 

 tine at Trieste. What Turkey was to Greece in 

 respect of quarantine, that Greece was to Turkey. 



There was a curious custom at Trieste of " making 

 Spoglio" as they phrased it. When three or four days 

 of the normal length of quarantine had still to run, it 

 was permissible to strip and leave all clothes behind, 

 to bathe, to put on new clothes, and to be free. The 

 process is based on the assumption that the well- 

 washed human body, if in apparent health after say 

 a week's seclusion, may justly be considered free from 

 infection, whereas the clothes worn by it must remain 

 still longer in quarantine. What happened was this. 

 We were inspected by the doctor, and then directed 

 to the edge of a covered quay, opposite to which was 

 another quay where old-clothes men displayed their 

 wares ; a strip of sea water, perhaps 4 or 5 feet deep 

 and 20 wide, separated the two quays. A bargain 

 had to be made with one of the old-clothes men by 

 shouting across the water. I was to leave everything 

 I had on me, excepting coin or other metal, and papers 

 which were about to be fumigated, in exchange for 

 the offered clothes. When the bargain was concluded, 

 I stripped, plunged in, and emerged on the opposite 

 quay stark naked, to be newly clothed and to receive 

 freedom. The clothes-man got my old things in due 

 time that was his affair. The new clothes were thin, 

 and the trousers were made of a sort of calico and 

 deficient in the fashionable cut of my old ones ; but 

 as it was not then late in the year the thinness 

 mattered little in those latitudes, and I did not care 

 about the rest. 



I occupied two of the days I had saved by making 



