The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-01-19


stantinople Kiamil Pasha had not been
able to secure an audience for many
days. He had been repeatedly to the
palace, sent in written reports, been
kept waiting several hours, and then
dismissed with a contemptuous mes
sage brought to him by a eunuch. 1t
must be borne in mind that whereas
previously ministers of state gathered
in council at the sublime porte, the
headquarters of the Ottoman govern
ment in Stamboul, used to exercise
real powers. the sultan acting upon
their advice, Abdul Hamid has taken
the reins of authority entirely into his
own hands and most of the ministers
today are the merest figureheadS, hav-
ing little more real influence over Turk
ish affairs than any readers of these
lines. They are appointed and dismis-
sed in accordance with petty personal
motives, or in order to throw dust in
the eyes Of Europe. A set of wax i'm
ages could do their work. The sultan
does everything himself An acquaint-
ance Of mine saw him one day deeply
immersed in a voluminous document.
"A few days afterwards he had the op-
portunity of inspecting the document
at the office of Nozim Pasha, minister
of police. 1t was the official report
upon a scuff1e that had taken place in
cafe chantant between a Greek and
Jew. The shadow of God was giving
hours of his time to a miserable Incl
dent that in London or New York a
police magistrate would have dismissed
In five minutes.
THE SULTAN'S FOUR CONSELLoRs.
There are four people In the Turkish
empire with whom the sultan takes coun.
sci. They are, first, Osman Pasha, of
whom have already spoken, and who
sits in the same carriage as his master
when the latter is driven, at every Fri
days selamllk, ECO yards from the palace
gate to the private mosque for prayer.
5000 troops ill the streets all around and
rend the air with two savage simultan-
eOuS shouts of welcome The second is
Hassan Pasha, minister of marine who
has shared with the sultan the pecula-
tons which have reduced the once fine
turkish feet to mass of rusting iron
and rotting wood, unable ever again to
leave its mornings in the Golden Horn.
The third is his own body servant, a man
OF the lowest extraction. The fourth is
of the profoundest ignorance and fanati-
clSm. And the two latter are far more
influential than the two former If to
these be added the name of His Excel
is nobody else in the whole Turkish en-
pre- who counts. l must pay this man
the compliment of saying that he is the
most repulslve object in human shape
Friday selamlik he is the last person to
pass before the sultan arrives. The broad
incline from the gates of Yildig to the
portals of the Hamidieh mosque is crowd
ed with troops in a dozen picturesque
uniforms, squadrons of cavalry block
every approach, brilliant aides-de-camp
and general officers stand in rigid groups
the clash and clang of a dozen military
bands has suddenly ceased, in the recep-
ton pavilion the diplomatists are posted
at one window and the favored guests at
another, the roadway has been snrinkled
with sand, every twig carried off, every
wind swept leaf removed, every footmark
erased by a long broom and the whole
gathering is petrified in spectacular atten-
ton, when from the palace huge figure
emerges, dressed in fez and a long black
frock coat and marches down the middle
with slow Waddling steps, casting AFRO
giant and insulting chances to right and
left. This is the chief eunuch and he is
tribe. Formerly their horrid mispropor-
lions were concealed under long robes.
Now these are enblaZened by European
dress. Pot bellied, long legged, splay-
tons, with dropping jaws and bullying
lips. their eyes filled half with fear and
half with. defiance, poor seXless beasts:
lowered forcibly with all the vices of
civilization and of savagery, and cut off
from the virtues of efther-you shudder to
your marrow as they pass.
THE SULTAN'S MUTE EUNUCHS.
something Y
worse even than these intriguing keepers
Of the pearls of the harem. Hidden away
from common sight and hearing are the
mute eunuchs, rendered also speechless
in earliest childhood. These are the peo-
pie of the dagger, the pillow, the bow
string and the swift running river. In
the old centuries when the foreign am
bassadors were thrust into the imperial
presence with the cry, Let the dogs come
ard be fed" a cannon doomed from Sc
raglo battlementts as the strangled
t1urg into the Bosphorus. No cannon now
adays announces the tragedies of the
palace OF the star, but they occur all the
same. There are plenty Of dungeons
Men told in whispers in Constantinople
the other day how seventeen men had
been bowstrung there in a single night.
And any Turk who trusts you can tell
you of a score of men who have recently
been summoned to Yildiz and never seen
agin. Within its walls I've the ov-S'Iltan
Constitutional party. would set uIun the
throne: and the white faced son of Add
III Aziz and his ravishing Circassian.
These know well that the moment a bd-
deposition will be their last They are
cut off entirely from the outside world,
and never door opens behind them but
they expect to hear the horrible inarticu-
late yelD Of the mute executoner Spr' ng-
ing upon them bowstring in hand. With
in the whited sepulchre of Yildiz at the
",
deeds are daily done of which one dare
hardly think, besides which Sodom and
Gomorrah were respectable communities.
Yet Abdul Hamid II seems to sit firmly
on his throne, secure in the jealousies Of
the great powers. unable to agree upon
the division of his kingdom. One of them
will do nothing to introduce stability or
further autonomy into the Balkan penin-
sula, preferring to wait til the ripe and
rotten fruit shall drop into her lap and
the hands of the others are thereby para
lyzed. And if the sultan loses heart for a
moment in the desperate game he is play
ing, he can find fresh courage by thinking
as Prot. crosvener in his great book
has recently reminded us, that the Brit
ish embassy stands unon land presented
TO England in gratitude for help against
France in 1901. that the site of the French
embassy was given to France in thank
fitness for aid against England in 1907
that the shaft among the expresses in the
cemetery al Scutari comm ernorates Eng
lish and French support against Russia in
1857. and that another column on the
Bosphorus tells how Russia saved NAH
moud II his empire in 1883. You think
US weak" said a Turkish statesman re-
Gently to a foreign ambassador, "but IN
truth we are very strong for our strength
is rooted in your Divisions"
HENRY NORMAN.