Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/378

328 instance hatred of their Turkish rulers led the Calynmiotes to screen a known murderer from justice; but why was it necessary to elect him head-constable,—to invest him with all the outward signs of respectability, to pay him a high salary, and to permit him to levy black mail as much as he pleases?

I was told that this is not the only case in which the Calymniotes have deliberately harboured murderers, nor is Calymnos the only place in the Turkish Archipelago where such felons are allowed to dwell in happy impunity.

In towns like Rhodes or Mytilene, where Pashas and Consuls reside, the authors of great crimes seldom venture to show in public; but in the smaller islands and in the seaports of Asia Minor there are generally to be found among the population one or more known murderers, who, like Manoli the Cassiote, contrive to maintain a very respectable position in society. It is in vain that the Greeks try to civilize themselves by schools and commerce, so long as they permit this canker of impunished crime to remain in then- communities.$143$

The unpleasant discovery as to the real character of Manoli the Cassiote was made by me at the beginning of the month of February, after he had been a long time in my employ. Immediately afterwards, the old Ionian in whose house I lodged came to me with a face of utter consternation, with the intelligence that the whole allied army was cut off to a man in the Crimea.

I had had no letters or newspapers for a whole mouth; and the last mail had brought me news of