the Christian blood thus shed would move throughout the Ottoman Empire. It has Christian Europe to pity." However noble may have been the original motives of the committee (and it certainly has many sympathizers throughout the whole Balkan peninsula), it has latterly taken the form of brigandage on a large scale. Blackmail, under menace of assassination, has been levied upon wealthy people in Macedonia, in Bulgaria, and in Roumania, for in plots money is essential. Worse than all, under cover of this association, the desperadoes and cutthroats of all Southeastern Europe are carrying on their nefarious work, secure from all interference so long as they share backsheesh and keep on good terms with the Turkish officials. Thus clothed and protected in the garb of politics, wild Circassians, fierce Georgians, lawless Bashi-Bazouks, hardy Albanians, Bulgar renegades, wily Greeks, and savage Turks- all "fellows of the baser sort" - range and devastate these lands of Ottoman misrule. And here, indeed, is the reason for the continuance of brigandage, in a nutshell. The whole account of Turkey is a sad story of ruin, desolation, poverty. Agriculture in a land whose policy is "take, take and never give," is impossible. Commerce, liable to so many risks - there can be none. All economic activity is paralyzed, for Turkey's policy in the management of what might be great industries is distinctly suicidal. Revenues out of all proportion to the holdings of the peasants are collected in the provinces and go to the sultan's treasury out of which he pays his spies and his provincial officials. The pay-days come but once or twice in the year, on the first day of Bairam (feast) which is celebrated at the end of the month of Ramazan (fast), and sometimes on the day of Courban Bairam (sacrificial feast). On these occasions the Constantinople papers burst into pæans of praise eulogizing the sultan, "whose kindly heart has been touched to bestow his benevolent fatherly care upon his servants by paying them their two months' arrears of salary," etc. It is this delay in the payment of salaries that has been productive of untold evil produced a horde of conscienceless officials who realize that the government expects them to make their own salaries out of the very people whose interests they might be supposed to conserve. In levying and collecting the taxes the meanest form of extortion is employed. Instead of making a just estimate of the value of property or produce (for every tree and field is assessed), a price is put upon it without any examination and always far above its value. Then, unless the officials are bribed in advance by the farmers, the tithe-collector will busy or hide himself until the crop, exposed to drenching rain and scorching sun, is spoiled. No one is permitted to harvest a field or pick the fruit of a tree until permission is granted by the Turkish official. Not long ago, a peasant in Adabazar was taxed double the amount called for by law. Daring to apply to the court for justice, the judge said: "Your nose is too big. You are rich enough to afford it." Other methods of extortion whereby the officials are profited are the giving of false receipts, the road-tax, and the quartering of the soldiers in the rate-payers' houses. As the majority of the peasants cannot read or write, receipts that give smaller sums or earlier dates are frequently palmed off upon them. The road repair scheme comes under the head of road and labor tax. When in the imagination of the governor or pasha a road needs repair, he orders the Christians to work on the road for a number of days without any compensation. Meanwhile he reports to the Constantinople government that so much money has been spent for repairs. The amount received, he pockets it. Those who are behindhand with their taxes have soldiers sent to live in their homes, where they rummage everywhere, use everything as if it were their own personal property, even to the dishonoring of wife and daughters. No appealed case is ever attended to in court unless the officials are bribed. No concession was given to the American Ice Company in Constantinople until the com pany promised to provide the palace with ice functory performance of duty is when the for nothing. It cost the French company brigands have shown themselves so utterly seventy-five thousand dollars before they could lay down the first railroad track between Jaffa and Jerusalem. "Back BASHI-BAZOUK. sheesh!" is the demand of the beggar. “ Backsheesh!" is the cry at the custom house. "Backsheesh!" is the command of the judge who sits on the bench. "Backsheesh! backsheesh!" everywhere and for everything! What wonder that so corrupt a government has turned loose a horde of robbers and brigands in the country and thieves in the cities? “Baluk bashdan bokmush" (the fish is spoiled from the head). The immunity afforded brigands who share their loot with the officials is proverbial. Nearly always they have protectors in high places to help them escape the arm of the law which is a poor, weak arm at best. If a force of soubaris (mounted police) is sent in chase, the laxity with which their duty is discharged, the neglect of proper precautions to insure success, and their extreme unwillingness to expose themselves to hardship or danger make the futile termination of the expedition a foregone conclusion. lacking in discrimination as to hold up some rich Turkish official having influence with the Porte, or some influential European with a government behind him. When this happens the police force is augmented by armed zaptiehs, who push their quest with such vigor that a gruesome row of crucified brigands soon stands, a ghastly object lesson, in the nearest market-place. For example, four years ago a Frenchwoman and her maid walking alone near Haidar Pasha, a suburb of Constantinople, were suddenly seized and taken to the mountains. A ransom of twenty-five hundred dollars was set, and the Turkish government compelled to advance the amount to the French ambassador (the French stand no nonsense in matters of this kind and the Porte understands it), who forwarded the money to the brigands. The women were at once released. The brigands were run to cover, and dead and living chained together and exposed in the market-place of Nicomedia for two days. A few years ago some Turkish women on their way from the ancient baths at Coury les Bains, Yalora, were captured by brigands and kept until ransomed. Since then a body of soldiers has always been kept on guard to prevent a repetition of this mistake. An American woman, Mrs. Louise Park Richards, widow of the artist, Samuel Richards, writes from there that it is "quite an experience being escorted by soldiers armed to the teeth, when one is simply going to have rheumatism steamed out." This patrol visits eight or ten villages, covering some forty kilometers a day in all weathers. Constantinople itself is a veritable hornet's nest of thieves and robbers. The streets are still lighted with kerosene oil, more often than not speedily extinguished by the fresh breeze from the Black Sea. This adds to the protection of the robbers, and no one thinks of going out after dark without an armed guard. For years the police captains, not only in old Stamboul but in Galata The only exception to the ordinarily per- and Pera in the European quarter, claimed that it was an impossibility to catch the thieves. This because they knew that their salaries depended upon the higher officials, who in turn depended upon the thieves. At last the European residents made such vigorous complaints to the Turkish government, through their several ambassadors, that a rigid examination was instituted in their quarter, and the police captain himself found to be not only the protector of the thieves but the instigator as well. The thieves in cities are usually Greeks or degenerate native-born Europeans, but the " brother in the mountains" not a shameful confession by any means is now an Albanian, now a Bulgar, now Greek, Kurd, Circassian, Georgian, Turk. It frequently happens that these men particularly the Circassians, Georgians, and Turks- have sisters or daughters who are favorites in the palace. In this case they are immune from detection or punishment, no matter how flagrant their offense. If there is too great a hue and cry raised against their nefarious methods, a compromise is effected by appointing them to some lucrative government position. Such was the notorious Moussa Bey, who, after the Armenian massacres, was given a position of honor in the interior. A number of the officials in the palace have served their turn on the road, while Smyrna even more than Constantinople, is the center of a large polyglot settlement of ex-brigands, who, when no longer preying on the world at large, devour each other. Such is the anomaly of a government founded and maintained on organized brigandage, legalized murder. Again, "Baluk bashdan, bokmush!" The fish is spoiled from the head. I ம் EVERY-DAY JAPAN. BY BEVERLEY BLAKE. N looking over my note-books and - were in even worse plight. They knew pictures, I find a large mass of facts nothing about work, in the ordinary sense about Japan which are rather hard of the word. They had been a leisure class to classify under one title. The for centuries, except for their occasional familiar things of Japanese life are too often military exploits. Food, clothes, and shelignored altogether by foreign writers, or are ter had always been furnished them, and touched upon so gingerly as scarcely to their education had been chiefly in the use pique, and never to satisfy, the reader's of arms. interest. If one deals only with common types and occupations to be studied there, one finds contrasts enough to our own, in all conscience. Victor Hugo once said that nothing is more certain to happen than the impossible; and in the Land of Topsy-Turvydom this seems especially true. But what after a long residence in Japan becomes familiar and therefore negligible, is on first view often curious or striking. Therefore in this paper I shall transcribe from my notes certain impressions which, though jotted down when I was a fresh arrival in the empire, I have no reason now to change. The illustrations, selected from my large private collection, here and there refresh my mind on some points not originally mentioned in the notebooks; and to me, next to the pleasure of living in Japan, which I left after a five years' residence, in April of last year, is the pleasure of writing about it. A COUNTRY CURIO SHOP. By curios I mean old Japanese works of art, and these are fast disappearing from the stores and shops of the empire. In the old feudal days nearly all the works of art were in the temples and in the collections of nobles, except such pieces as were given to their retainers as rewards of faithful service. When the present emperor, Mutsu Hito, came into power most of the temple lands and the estates of many of these lords were confiscated, and the nobles had to sell their treasures. Their retainers the samurai Suddenly they were called upon to support large families, and with the coming of the emperor into more direct and absolute sovereignty, all their warlike occupations were gone the whole feudal system abolished. They were more helpless than the negroes of our own southern states after the close of the Civil War; for the negroes had worked with their hands and knew nothing else, while the samurai always had despised menial toil as far beneath their dignity. At this time priceless works of art were sold for a song. The time had come when caste must take a back seat and money was to step to the front. The impoverished samurai, who formerly had looked down in lofty disdain on the merchant and banker, no matter how rich, now bowed before him and humbly begged for food to keep him and his family from starving. Piece by piece he parted with his household treasures, till at last only his swords and the swords of his ancestors were left. He would not part with these, but his children, in many cases, have done so. An old samurai from Owari came to visit me while I lived in Nagoya. He brought with him his six swords one eight hundred years old. He was afraid that if he left them at home a fire might ruin them or that they might be stolen. When I took him to the club he carried his swords on his shoulder. He cleaned them fastidiously every morning. He slept with them beside him every night. You were requested not to speak or smoke while he was showing them. One of them was carried by the second in command of the famous Forty-seven Ronins. |