Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/317

Rh to read Turkish. He told us with much complacency that it required about forty years to master the text of the Koran; but that at the expiration of that period the scholar would meet his reward, for the Koran contained all knowledge that was of any use to man. I asked him whether he had no curiosity to know anything about European countries or the discoveries of European science. He gave me the old stereotyped answer, that if any of this new knowledge was good for the soul of man, it would be found in the Koran (by dint of searching of course); if not, it was not worth knowing. One day I showed him how I inflated an india-rubber bath. The bellows made a curious squeaking noise as it drove in the air. The Hoja stood by with stolid indifference. When I had stopped working the bellows, he inquired why the noise ceased. On my explaining to him the cause, he said with a look of disappointment, "I thought that there was an animal inside."

, August 10, 1854. days ago, Ishmael Pasha, the Governor-General of the Archipelago, arrived here from Rhodes, in a Turkish war steamer. Every summer the Pasha of the Archipelago makes a tour of inspection round the islands entrusted to his charge, with the professed object of redressing any grievances and punishing any acts of