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this characteristic of his flock, urged Sir Robert Biddulph to compel all the people to help in the labor of destruction, but the representative of free Britons deemed that such a measure, though it might not be contrary to public opinion in Cyprus, would fail to receive sanction in England, and that considering the scarcity of labor and the abundance of the promised harvest, it would be unfair to interfere with the agricultural population.

But this inertness in regard to any effort to cope with locusts has often been observed in other countries. In Spain, for instance, when they were ravaging the land in the last century, the peasants could not be roused to any effort for their destruction, but quietly watched them devouring their gardens and their crops. The magnitude of the evil seemed to paralyze effort.

The reports from Nicosia omit to state the weight of locusts there destroyed, so we fail to learn whether it equalled or exceeded the twelve thousand tons of Famagusta. We may safely assume that it could not have been less than two-thirds of the yield of the eastern province, and at this estimate the total of the year's produce must certainly have reached twenty thousand tons. No wonder that my pigfeeding friend should so sorely regret the burial of so much good animal food!

The superintendents and commissioners agreed in recommending that in this spring of 1883 no effort whatever should be made for the destruction of locusts' eggs, as it was evidently quite useless to expect to find them all. Even on average ground, and under government supervision, it seems impossible to discover all these hidden treasures, and it is rare that more than seventy per cent. are collected. The subsequent endeavor to capture the locusts hatched from the remaining thirty per cent. involves just as much trouble and expense as if the full number had been developed.

Moreover the destruction of the locusts' eggs necessarily involves that of the larvae of the Bombylidæ or bee-fly, which is a most valuable ally, as it devours the locusts' eggs, and five per cent. of those collected in Cyprus in the autumn of 1881 were found to be thus affected, and would consequently have perished without any human intervention.

So, in the present year, all efforts are reserved for the wholesale destruction of the locust legions when they are in full marching order. To this end a very large

addition has been made to the number of screens and traps, the latter being edged with well-greased oil-cloth, which answers the same purpose as well-greased zinc in preventing the locusts from passing over it, and is much lighter to carry. With this increase of screens, and a large increase of workmen and of mounted overseers, it is hoped that this season the greater part of the locusts may have been destroyed ere they could lay their eggs.

"All," says Mr. Inglis, "depends upon the traps and screens being placed quickly and with judgment. As fast as the pits are filled, fresh ones should be ready, and as soon as the great mass of the column has been destroyed, or has passed round the flanks, the line should be lifted and put down somewhere else, where most required, and to do this requires not only intelligence on the part of the overseers, but also sufficient labor."

There was every reason to expect that the work this year would prove quite as heavy as it has been hitherto, more so, indeed, as the locusts' eggs were scattered over a much wider area, and in the Famagusta district, sixty per cent. of the whole were laid in Larnaca, mostly on hilly ground, where it is difficult to manœuvre the screens. The preliminary outlay has, however, been less than in former years, as so large a quantity of screens and traps had already been provided, and the expenditure for egg-purchase, which in 1881 amounted to 12,2627., has also been saved.

Now that the warfare is properly organized, there is good reason to believe that ultimate victory is assured. From the fact of the locust being indigenous, and not a visitor from the mainland, there seems room to hope that it may be altogether eradicated, and this task will become easier if the population increases and cultivation extends. At present the sparseness of the population and the large tracts of uncultivated land are all in favor of the locust increase. The waste lands which now form its favorite breeding. grounds are capable of yielding wine and olives, cotton and corn, in lieu of locusts' eggs, and the insect, which will only deposit its eggs on hard, undisturbed ground, would find an ever-narrowing area suited to its purpose.

Meanwhile the locust war of March, April, and May, 1883, has been diligently carried on, and we may trust that its close will find the farmers of Cyprus rejoicing over something approaching to the exter mination of their greedy foe.

C. F. GORDON CUMMING.

From Macmillan's Magazine. TWO TURKISH ISLANDS TO-DAY.

I.

CHIOS.

CHIOS suffered, as we all know, from an overwhelming earthquake just two years ago; for a short time the island was a nine days' wonder, and relief poured in from all quarters of Europe. Since then she has been forgotten; Europe has had earthquakes and other excitements nearer home, and the ruin of Chios is now only a vague memory. Unfortunately for the island it forms an insignificant portion of the Turkish dominions, consequently its disasters are twofold - the one over whelming at the time, the other perma nent and galling in the extreme. During a tour I took in the island it seemed to me that no other portion of the Turkish dominions that I had visited offered such a lamentable example of misrule and oppression, and there is no one to raise a protest. For what is Chios but a small island in the Ægæan Sea? Nobody visits the interior now the villages are in ruins; all the rich that could have left her. The printing press has been peremptorily stopped, so who can hear the groans of those who suffer and are robbed?

We will dismiss the chief town, or Chora (Xupa) as it is called, in a few words, for though in ruins the people here are comparatively prosperous. Even if they do live in wooden huts instead of threestoried houses with marble staircases, in a country subject to earthquakes they are safer where they are. Their climate is delicious, and the perfume of orange and lemon groves makes you forget that there are still buried in the ruins the bones of the victims of the earthquake. The people of the Chora are timid about return ing to their houses for more reasons than one; they affirm that the ghosts of the unburied still haunt the ruins, and a Greek of to-day, just as a Greek of old, objects to return to the ruined site of some great disaster. Again, the great dread of the earthquake has not left them yet; "It may return or not," they say, "who knows?" It is only a venturesome minority which tries to make the most of the ruins and live as they lived before.

Furthermore there are a few wealthy merchants still in the Chora M. Choremi, for example, who has headed a subscription for the erection of new schools, and who is making a new road through the ruins; M. Polimedes and others, who are

doing what they can to help their fellowcountrymen. And then the pasha lives here, and it is to the interest of the Turks to put on a good appearance in the Chora, as by this means they can hide the hideous state of the rest of the island. If a foreigne comes at all, for business or pleasure, he only stops at the Chora, and there. he may lament the ruins, but he sees no abject poverty. But then the Chora contains not quite ten thousand Christians, and under five thousand Turks; whereas the island has fifty thousand Christians altogether, and but few Turks except soldiers out of the Chora.

Mule-riding for a week is the only way to see the interior of Chios; of carriages there are none. The southern road from the Chora leads through the plain, or Kampos as it is called, once dotted over with charming villas, but now all these are ruins. Here, before the earthquake, rich Greek merchants lived, who had made their money abroad, and who had retired to their native Chios as to a sort of earthly paradise. The names of Ralli, Scaramanga, Mavrocordato, are all connected with this fertile plain of Chios, forming, as they did, an aristocracy of wealth, for before the war of 1821 the Turks treated Chios with unusual clemency.

Wherever the eye can reach stretch orange and lemon groves. Old towers remnants of piratical days had been utilized to form the nucleus of pleasant villas, but these are now for the most part entirely ruined or tottering. Walls are standing, perhaps with fireplaces in them and shreds of paper hanging from them

tokens of a home life but recently destroyed. Strangely enough, the church steeples alone seem to have stood the shock, holding their own whilst all around is ruined, and some of these are slightly out of the perpendicular, unpleasantly sug. gestive of insecurity.

Our first halt, for lunch, was at the convent of Agios Minas, built on a gentle eminence overlooking the plain, the sea, and the adjacent coast of Asia. This, till the disaster, was a flourishing spot, with a church within its precincts, which dated from the early centuries of the Christian era; but it is now almost entirely destroyed, and the mosaics which adorned the interior exist no more. The Rev. Gregorius Semariotes, the superior, fed us with eggs, figs, and bread, beneath an olive-tree, for there was no place left for the accommodation of strangers save a wooden hut where the three monks slept; and it was from his lips that we first heard

the story of oppression and tyranny which we were to verify as we went on. Of all the buildings which composed this convent one only is in fair preservation, and this is a square mortuary chapel, filled with the bones of four thousand Greeks 13 who were slaughtered here in 1821. Father Gregory told us the story as he showed us the bones - how fourteen thousand Greeks, from all parts of Chios, took refuge here from that terrible slaughter in the war of independence which first ruined Chios; how the whole Turkish army laid siege to the place, killed four thousand and took the rest as slaves or prisoners; and here the bones of the dead are still - skulls cut in two by swords, arms, legs, etc., heaped one on the other in cupboards around the wall. It is a pity that the earthquake, whilst destroying the rest, did not bury forever these perpetual reminders of Turkish barbarity.

It is undoubtedly to the priesthood that we owe the existence of a Greek identity. By means of pilgrimages, miracles, martyrdoms, and saints, they have kept to gether through centuries of slavery the individuality of the nation.

After leaving Agios Minas, we soon entered the so-called mastic villages, once the most prosperous district of the island, and now the scene of the wildest devastation. The mule-track through these villages winds its way over the tops of houses; now you ride past the fireplace in a second story, and then down you go to the level of a street. From many of these mounds the dead have never been extricated. One spot was pointed out to us as the tumulus of twenty-eight men there assembled in a café, when the earthquake came on them and killed them all. Money, time, and energy are all wanting even now to dig amongst the ruins. Generations to come will find in Chios Pompeiis without end.

The story of one mastic village is the story of another-abject poverty. Here everything was ruined, for the earthquake came on Sunday, so that the people, with their mules and implements of husbandry, were all at home. In the face of this terrible disaster and the generous contributions from Europe, the Turkish govern ment could do nothing but promise to remit taxation for five years, they said, or until such time as the people had recovered from the effects. This sounded well enough in the ears of Europe, and everybody was satisfied. The Turks were poor, they could do no more.

A year goes by and the case is only altered, inasmuch as Europe has forgotten Chios. Money had been distributed amongst the sufferers surely that was enough! But the inhabitants had not recovered, for the whole of that year shocks recurred again and again; they were still paralyzed by their great disas ter, and dreaded another. Turkey now sees her opportunity; double taxation is demanded to make up for the year of exemption, and this double is established as the rate of taxation for the future.

Could anything be more atrocious, saving perhaps their way of exacting it? The inhabitants of the village of Kalamotti form a committee to discuss whether resistance is possible; it is decided that nothing could be done, for the Sciote is not by nature brave like the Samiote, he is mercantile, shrewd, but timid. Money is therefore borrowed at an exorbitant rate of interest, their mastic crops and implements are mortgaged, abject starvation is the result. At each village we passed through we were shown women starving in their hovels, without a crust to give their hungry children. At Olympi, another mastic village, Turkish soldiers met the laborers in the fields, and in default of payment of the desired taxation, seized their mules, their goats, and their tools. On the slightest demur the delinquent was thrown into prison. And now the Turks are raising forts and placing garrisons all over the island to enforce payment.

It may be said that throughout the length and breadth of Turkey the inhabitants are ground down to the uttermost farthing, but in Chios there is a difference. On the other Turkish islands and on the mainland I found all complain more or less, but there life is possible; Chios has suffered recently from such a terrible disaster, that if she is not treated with greater lenience life will be impossible there. Suppose, for example, instead of sending succor to India after the famine, we had demanded double taxation, we should have done precisely what the Turks are now doing in Chios. But Chios, unfortunately for herself, is not India-only a small, unnoticed island in the Ægæan Sea.

Some statistics I gathered from the books of the demarch of Kalamossia may serve to show the estimated extent of the disaster. After the earthquake there were twelve hundred inhabitants left surviving, five hundred of whom were children; five hundred and fourteen were destroyed.

The assistance received from all sources was entered in a book, each page of which was stamped with the official stamp; each sack of potatoes, each sack of flour, each plank of wood was valued and entered at a very reasonable valuation, as far as I could judge, and the total item of assis tance came to 742/., or at the rate of 12s. 4d. per head. This, of course, was little compared to the losses, but still it was enough to stave off starvation for a time. Other villages further from the capital were not so lucky, for the distribution was uneven. Everything came first of necessity to the capital, and the people of the Chora knew how to take care of themselves. Further on we found that in villages where the destruction had been the same, the survivors had not received more than 3s. 6d. per head.

On another page was put down and likewise stamped with the government seal an estimate of the loss, and its total came to 82,000l., which can be no exaggeration, as the items included churches, schools, public buildings, and three hundred and fifty houses. To-day we see the five hundred children of Kalamossia running about in rags like spectres amongst the ruins, without a schoolhouse, or a schoolmaster, or any chance of such a luxury, because their parents have to pay double the amount of taxes they had to do before their ruin.

ern Greeks do, according to accent, and ignoring the long o, but with a sort of musical cadence in it, placing an accent on both the first syllables. Their double letters, too, are prominent, each μ in yoάupa being distinctly sounded.

It was very difficult to obtain a lodging in this ruined village. We sat for a long time in a wooden hut, thinking that this would be our abode for the night; but at length a room, with yawning cracks in the ceiling, was prepared for us, and here we sat to receive the demarch, as a deputy of the village, to tell their past and present misfortunes. He sat on a sack of mastic as he talked, and the whole room smelt of mastic, for it is the chief industry of the place. In August they tap the trees for the sap, and it is much prized as a luxury in the East. You masticate little lumps of this gum mastic, which resembles varnish in its flavor, and candlegrease when reduced to a proper pulp. Even this industry, which the earthquake could not destroy, is not as it used to be. The capital is poor, the whole of Turkey is poor, and mastic is but a luxury, which can he done without.

In the same way the villages which the earthquake did not touch have suffered too, for they have not now a sufficient market for their goods; and they tell me that even in the north of the island, where the shock was comparatively slight, the greatest poverty prevails.

Olympi was the first village we reached where the damage had been but slight; here, however, there was but little improvement in prosperity. It is a purely agricultural village, and had supplied its neighbors with food; the neighbors have now no money with which to buy food. So Olympi, with no means of sending its productions further afield, is suffering much. But still they have their homes left to them. It is a funny little village from a distance, like one large house or fort. In the centre is an old Genoese fortress, and around are tightly packed the narrow streets; around the whole is a wall. You can visit any house you like in Olympi by climbing on the roofs, which mode of progression is preferable to threading your way through the dirty, arched-over streets.

Excessively quaint was the picture of the next village, Kalamotti, as we rode in towards sunset. Some twenty or thirty women were assembled round the well with ruins all around them. Each was dressed in the costume peculiar to this corner of the island. On their heads they wore a white, twisted headdress, the KOUλoup, the serpent-like ring, symbolical of eternity, with its long white streamer down their back; there is a sort of peak inside the rings to raise it somewhat. Their blue jackets, the owμápiov, with needle-work down the back and frills round the edge, fit tightly to their body. One white petticoat beneath this, is all no shoes, no stockings, and a pitcher in either hand. The features of the Greeks in these villages are highly marked, and differ from any I had seen elsewhere; dark, almond-shaped eyes, pencilled eyebrows, round face, prominent nose, and Our host was a genial man; he took us sallow complexion being the distinguish- to visit all points of interest, and told us ing feature, hair hanging like whiskers on how he had an aunt who was a Turkish each side of the face. Their language, slave, being captured as a young girl in too, is more primitive, with many Ionic the war of 1822. At that same time the peculiarities; they pronounce the omega Turks had used the Church of St. Midistinctly, saying йv@pwrros, not as the mod-chael at Olympi as a stable, and pierced

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Of course these remembrances of a past are still keen in Chios, and don't help them to endure the present with any greater resignation. Wholesale cruelty and slaughter like that of 1821 and 1822 can never happen again, but then the cruelty of exacting more money than men can possibly pay, if not so openly monstrous as a great slaughter, is no less disastrous in the result; and then the Turks have ways and means of exacting money which none can realize without actually witnessing. For example, hundreds of poor Greek pilgrims left Smyrna this spring for the neighboring island of Tenos, as they do twice every year, without a passport, or even dreaming that such will be required of them. This year, however, it occurred to an ingenious official to demand of these pilgrims on their return their passports. None of course had them, and a fine of five francs a head all round was imposed.

Again, a new governor is sent to Chios, and finds on his arrival that meat is a shilling a pound; he immediately says it is too dear, and orders it to be sixpence in future. The butchers, however, know what he is after; they have a meeting of their guild; they make up a purse amongst them, and present it to the governor. If he is satisfied with this, without any further demur he raises meat to eighteenpence a pound.

No sadder sight for the archæologist exists than the ruins of the new monastery (Néa Movǹ), as it is called. It is up in the mountains of Chios, at the head of a romantic gorge, and was built by Constantine Monomachos nine hundred years ago, in recognition of a cunning prophecy the monks had made about his ascending the imperial throne. All the glories of Byzantine art were lavished on it; the mosaics were amongst the finest in the East, and styled the "glory of the Egaan Sea." Now the largest quantity of them lie in a heap outside the church door; red, yellow, blue, green, square bits of glass may be picked up in handfuls. Every building round the church is in ruins, yet the church itself, though much damaged, and the mosaics ruined, is standing, for it has a vaulted roof; and everywhere we noticed that vaulted roofs, arches, and so forth were the best preserved.

Before the war of independence this monastery had no less than four hundred monks a perfect village, as the ruins attest. Before the earthquake there were

prosperous, as recent travellers know who have partaken of their hospitality. They were educated men, too.

Now there are barely eighty of them left, mostly in rags, ill fed, and feverstricken from exposure in their wooden huts to the inclement mountain winds, and they are so busy tilling their ground to earn their bread that they have not even dug the books of their library out of the ruins. For two years now these books and numerous old MSS. have remained buried in the débris.

Two rival hermits live on two rival peaks above the monastery. Father Procopios built a church for himself over an anchorite's cave, and, wonderful to relate, the earthquake did not so much as injure a stone of his building; furthermore, the people of the Chora maintain that he prophesied the earthquake, and so idolized was he by the populace that the Turks put him into prison last year as a mover of sedition; but on religious matters the Turks are as a rule tolerant, so they sent him back again in answer to the clamors of the people, and now he has returned to his cell and his prophecies.

When Moslem fanaticism has not been aroused, as was the case in 1821, the Turkish government has been excessively lenient to their Greek subjects in the matter of religion. In every Greek church in Turkey of any antiquity, there exists but one sign of subjection; and it is this. Before the conquest of Constantinople, in the churches there existed a stone slab with the eagles of Constantine carved thereon, and put up in some conspicuous position. Now this is placed, by order of the sultan, on the pavement to be trampled under foot, and the eagle has to have keys in its hands to symbolize the authority handed over to the sultan.

In Lesbos a few years ago, commissioners were sent to see that these eagles were as they should be, and serious com. plaints were made that some were missing. In some churches the ingenious Christians have placed this slab on a pivot, so that the eagle may be placed downwards, and when there is a rumor of an inspection the stone is turned round.

Father Parthenios is the name of the rival hermit on the rival peak. I asked him about the success as a prophet Father Procopios had gained, and he answered with a sinister smile,

"He only preached to the people that if they did not turn from their wicked ways something terrible would happen to

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