Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/260

206 an official is sent by the Pasha or Mutsellim to settle the tithe which he judges the land cultivated by each individual will yield. This he never fails to exaggerate, and fixes the excise accordingly. In the next place he tells the peasants that the pasha wants money instead of produce, which he then proceeds to value sometimes at thrice the value which the poor people can obtain for it in the market. Thus for a mann of raisins, which sells for one piastre and a half, he exacts five piastres; for a mann of tobacco, which is sold for ten, he exacts twenty-two and a half piastres; and so with rice, cotton, sesame, and other productions of the soil.

The following is another bright specimen of Turkish injustice. Mohammed Pasha sometimes receives presents from the Arab tribes, and more frequently plunders them, of large flocks of sheep and other cattle; if not in want of the sheep he sends them out under a military escort to the districts around Mosul, and fixes the number which each village must buy at his own valuation. It frequently happens that several die on the road, and more are slaughtered by the guards for their own private use while on the road; of these they are careful to preserve the ears, which they string together on a cord and carry with them. On arriving at a village they make over to the kiahya, say, eighteen sheep, and demand payment for twenty. If any demur is made by the unfortunate peasants, two pairs of ears are produced by the soldiers as an equivalent for the deficiency. The kiahya is held responsible for the amount, and proceeds to deal out the sheep to the villagers, who dare not refuse to purchase them.

What government can stand under such a system as this? The case with many of the larger towns in the interior of Asiatic Turkey is wretched enough, but it is in the distant provinces and villages, far removed from the eye of European influence and criticism (which nevertheless are the chief support of the empire), that such tyranny and oppression are in full vigour.

Part of this day was taken up with the necessary preparations for our departure. The presents which I had brought for the patriarch and what little baggage I had with me were packed up in four separate bundles, weighing about forty pounds each, so