Page:Islam, Turkey, and Armenia, and How They Happened.djvu/197

Rh with its owner, before the governor, who, generally without examination, would order the poor Armenian to be imprisoned. Several days, and very often weeks, would pass until that paper—perhaps a mother's letter or a discourse on botany—could be handed to its owner and several hundred piasters demanded for his release. If that paper had contained anything directly or indirectly about the government, or some words that the examiner's arbitrary and vicious will could give an unfavorable interpretation, the poor man could not expect to come out of his prison.

Turkish Prisons are always attached to the city hall and in its dark and damp basement. These prisons, far from being the means of correction, are the most terrible device of bribery, vengeance, cruelty and suffering, especially for the poor Christians who are shut in these subterranean hells under the name of political prisoners. For them there is no law, no justice, no conscience and no name. Exposed to cold, hunger, thirst, flogging, bodily tortures of every description, made to squat in deep mud, sitting in freezing water, pulling out of mustache and beard, hanging head downward, burning portions of the body with red-hot tongs, pouring filth over the head, burying the head in manure and violation of personal honor, these are the common tortures which could be mentioned among the various unspeakable brutalities perpetrated upon the poor, helpless Christians daily.

"The Inquisitorial dungeons of the Middle Ages," says one, "may be regarded as paradise compared with