BRIGANDAGE IN TURKEY.

Inangahua Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1340, 24 December 1883, Page 2

BRIGANDAGE IN TURKEY.

The capture of the Governor of Salonica with the candi and medjliss of that town, is an extreme instance of the complete palsy which has crept upon the Turkish Government since the war of 18877-78. The' bandits demand a ransom of £30,000 and it is probable that they will get it After the money has been paid, the Seraskierate may commission an energetic officer like Mafic Pasha to exterminate the band — a task which he will perform in the rough-and-ready fashion peculiar to Turkish officials. Any village which may have been used by the brigands will be burned, and the chief man put to death after a certain number have been examined touching the lair of the banditti A favorite method of extorting evidence on such occasions is to hang the person under examination by, the heels, and to light a smoky fire • under his nose. In tax collection this species of coercion has also been found very useful. For the rest, Salonica, although one of the chief commercial centres of Turkey, has long been afflicted by the depredations of banditti. The capture of Colonel Sygne and his wife some three years ago will be in the recollection of all, but it is not generally known that tho carrying away of that officer was no isolated de*i During the Russian war, when Salonica was full of soldiers, brigands would walk' into the town and coolly march away with, well-to-do citizens, .and some of these captures were made in. thepuhlio gardens, on high days and holidays,, wij-n title whole town' was taking its -ease. Turkey, is fast relapsing; into the : knltaSiivp which mkrked the last days of the eighteenth cnutury and the first deccade of the nineteenth century, when outside the large towns the whole country was at the mercy of robber chiefs called Btsse-beys.