after that number some reason was expected to be shown for the further use of the sword and bowstring on that day. Now the case is altered: fewer crimes are committed in Turkey than in London, and the Turkish pashas endeavour to stop such practices as are considered discreditable on the part of the inferior officers; though they have to contend with great difficulties in a country where it is hardly possible to get at the truth, and where the inferior officers have for generations been accustomed to plunder those below them, directly they are out of sight of the higher authorities; trusting to the want of communication, the slight knowledge of writing, and the many obstacles in the way which prevent the poor man's story getting to the ears of the Pasha or the Sultan, who, in these days at least, are anxious to remedy such abuses, and to distribute justice with a tolerably impartial hand. I had great satisfaction in hearing afterwards that, owing to my exertions in this and other cases the good cause being taken up warmly by Colonel Williams, after I was gone all torture was authoritatively abolished in the pashalic of Erzeroom; and I am in hopes that, except in some snug little dungeon in the rocky castle of a half-independent Koordish chief, this horrible custom is almost extinct.

The Koord above mentioned was hanged in so original a manner that I must shortly describe it, as it took place immediately under my window. What we called at school a cat-gallows was erected close to a bridge over the little stream which ran down the horse-market, between my house and the bottom of the hill of the citadel. The culprit stood under this; the cross-beam was not two feet above his head; a kawass, having tied a rope to one end of the beam, passed a slip-knot round the neck of the Koord, a young and very handsome man, with long black hair; he then drew the rope over the other end of the beam, and pulled away till the poor man's feet were just off the ground, when he tied the rope in a knot, leaving the dead

body hanging, supported by two ropes in the

form of the letter V.

Hardly any one was looking on, and in the afternoon the body was taken down and buried.

I shall always consider this case as a remarkable instance of the power of fatalism over the mind of an ignorant and superstitious man. This Koord was entirely the cause of his own execution: no one knew him by sight at Erzeroom, and there was not the slightest necessity for his declaring his name to the Pasha, and confessing that he had committed murders and outrages of all kinds among the villages of Koordistaun. His punishment for stealing a horse would not have been very severe, and, but for his voluntary admission that he was a notorious malefactor, for whom the police had long been on the look out, he might have been alive to this day to rob and murder, till somebody shot him, or he became too old for the exertion. Fatalism, in other cases, has a powerful influence over the true believers in the armies of Islam. The soldier goes to battle with the firm belief that, if his hour is not come, the cannon of the enemy can have no power over him; and that if his hour is arrived, the angel of death will call him, whether he may be seated on his divan, or walking in full health in his

garden at home: just as readily does he bow his head to fate in one place as in another. By this institution of the Koran, the wonderful genius of Mohamed has gained many a victory by the hands of his trusting and believing followers for the caliphs and sultans of his creed. Some of the reforms of Sultan Mahmoud, by treating lightly many of the ancient prejudices of the Osmanlis, have shaken the throne under his feet. The progress of infidelity, which has begun at Constantinople, is the greatest temporal danger to the power of the Turkish empire. The Turk implicitly believes the tenets of his religion; he keeps its precepts and obeys its laws; he is proud of his faith, and prays in public when the hour of prayer arrives. How different, alas! is the manner in which the divine laws of Christianity are kept! The Christian seems ashamed of his religion; as for obeying the doctrines of the Gospel, they have no perceptible effect upon the mass of the people, among whom drunkenness, dishonesty, and immorality prevail almost unchecked, except by the fear of punishment in this world; while in Turkey not one-tenth part of the crime exists which is annually committed in Christendom.

A few days after this occurrence, as I was sitting in the summer chamber at the top of the

F

house, I heard a most extraordinary shuffling and screeching behind the curtain which hung over the door; the curtain shook about, and numerous subdued voices and noises were heard, which sounded like cocks and hens suffering from strangulation. I shouted out to know what in the world was going on; after a while the kawass drew aside the curtain, and along the floor advanced a most strange and incomprehensible procession of several women and men, crawling on their hands and knees, each with a cock or a hen in their hands, whose fluttering, and screaming, and crowing now broke forth in full chorus; one or two got away, and flew about the room, as its owner, making use of her hands to walk with, was unable to hold the terrified fowl. This procession advanced to the divan, and, without saying a word, the foremost woman seized hold of one of my legs, which was inadvertently sticking out, and, holding on to my ancle, kissed my foot, and burst out into a string of exclamations in Armenian, no one word of which made any impression on my understanding. Being horribly alarmed, I kicked as well as I could, and, having escaped into the remotest corner of the divan, I begged to know what all this portended; and on the chickens being caught, and comparative silence