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Updated: June 11, 2025
As for myself, I certainly repent having come out, and have still better reasons for doing so before reaching the safe retreat of Tifticjeeo-ghlou Effendi's house, an hour afterward. The most that the inadequate squad of zaptiehs present can do, when we arrive opposite the muncipal konak, is to keep the crowd from pressing forward and overwhelming me and the bicycle.
Why, he makes every employe of the government subscribe for a certain number of copies, and the subscription price is kept back out of their salaries; for instance, the mulazim of zaptiehs would have to take half a dozen copies, the mutaserif a dozen, etc.; if from any unforeseen cause the current expenses are found to be more than the income, a few additional copies are saddled on each 'subscriber. "Before leaving Sivas, I arrive at the conclusion that Hallil Eifaat Pasha knows just about what's what; while administering the affairs of the Sivas vilayet in a manner that has gained him the good-will of the population at large, he hasn't neglected his opportunities at the Constantinople end of the rope; more than one beautiful Circassian girl has, I am told, been forwarded to the Sultan's harem by the enterprising and sagacious Sivas Vali; consequently he holds "trump cards," so to speak, both in the province and the palace.
At the frontier an escort of Turkish zaptiehs will take the place of the Persian soldiers, and at Erzeroum the missionaries will, of course, render her every assistance to Trebizond; but it is not without feelings of anxiety for the health of a lady travelling in this rough manner unaccompanied by her natural protector, that I reflect on the discomforts she must necessarily put up with between here and Erzeroum.
The talk went on ding-dong all the time, and in the course of it my host asked me with what weapons the Zaptiehs the mounted police who were relied on to keep order and the irregulars who were committing unchecked atrocities everywhere, were respectively armed.
Two hours vanished before our gentlemen zaptiehs condescended to rise from their peaceful slumbers; then a great deal of time was unnecessarily consumed in eating their special breakfast. This over, they concluded not to go on without sandals to take the place of their heavy military boots, as at this point their horses would have to be discarded.
Ten miles over an indifferent road is traversed next morning; the comfortless reflection that anything like a "square meal" seems out of the question anywhere between the larger towns scarcely tends to exert a soothing influence on the ravenous attacks of a most awful appetite; and I am beginning to think seriously of making a detour of several miles to reach a mountain village, when I meet a party of three horsemen, a Turkish Bey with an escort of two zaptiehs.
Nothing, now, was too heavy for the donkeys, and even the zaptiehs themselves condescended to relieve us of our alpenstocks. That night we sat again around the Kurdish camp-fire, surrounded by the same group of curious faces.
In the afternoon, an officer appears with a note saying that the Mutaserif and a number of gentlemen would like to see me ride inside the municipal konak grounds. This I very naturally promise to do, only, under conditions that an adequate force of zaptiehs be provided.
"Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Bimbashis and their Yuzbachis, shall, I hope, clear out from the province they have desolated and profaned." He followed up this pamphlet by a series of speeches, delivered to great meetings and to the House of Commons, with which for four years he sought, as he expressed it, "night and day to counterwork the purpose of Lord Beaconsfield."
On dismounting, we learned that a harbinger had been sent by the khan, the evening before, to have a guard ready to join us as we passed through. In fact, two armed ferashes were galloping toward us, armed, as we afterward learned, with American rifles, and the usual kamma, or huge dagger, swinging from a belt of cartridges. These fellows, like the zaptiehs, were fond of ostentation.
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