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 THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. 14I within earshot of the terrors of his voice. At the gate of his palace were always to be found ready waiting a hundred and fifty soldiers under full arms, an itch-aga, and an execu- tioner. It needed only a significant move of his head to cause any one of his petitioners to be led out to die." "The Ottoman Empire," says Pouqueville, "is the empire of woe. It is not like any other country in the world. The people who live in it are at once ferocious and apathetic, and are destitute of the slightest feeling for the public interest. From Constantinople to the banks of the Euphratus, and from the shores of the Bos- phorus to Cattaro, the towns are cesspools full of dung and filth, the villages are either dens of wild beasts or deserted. The exclusive sub- jects of conversation are pestilence, conflagra- tions, epidemics, and famines. The gates of the great cities are hidden by groups of gibbets, and towers loaded with human skulls. The roads traversed by the local governors are lined with gory heads, stakes for impalement, and other instruments of death. The traveller meets no one who is not clad in the livery of destitu- tion. There is no police, no public order, no rest, and no safety for life and property. The