The weekly Alaska citizen., 1917-12-03
EVEN CHICKENS
 ARE EXCLUDED
 FROM REPUBLIC

HIu. Blegen and Dinsmore of the American School of Archaeology, has
 just returned from a notable trip in which the famous Mount Olympus, | 9.754 feet, was scaled to it's highest
 summit, and a visit was made to that
 most curious of all republics, a ro- public of monas.eries. grouped about the mountainside Of Mount Athos
 C"mbirg Mount Olympus has long been regarded a difficult and danger ous operation, for beside the rocky ascent and the snowdrifts on the up
 per heights. it was for years the home of Greek and Turkish brigands i and was the scene of most of the l famous cases of brigandage. Since l the Greek government has been in control hrigandage has been held in check, largely by the death penalty, 1 though six brigands were recently
 taken in that region after a pitched l battle with the troops.
 The American party was provided
 with a guar. of seven gendarmes
 which seems to have been effective i against the outlaw element, as no
 sign of 1t was seen. The ascent
 took the best part of three days and ] the party passed the night in the open on the highest summit The ] descent was made the following day
 from the other side, sloping toward ! the bay of Saloniki
 l Mount Athos presented an entirely different picture, not of snowy
 heights but of beautifully wooded
 hills Here this monastic republic
 has been carried on for the last
 twelve hundred years, with it's inde 1 pendence recognized suCcessively by l the old Byzantian rulers, then by
 the Turks and now by the Creeks The mountain stands on long
 peninsula which juts out into the l Aegean Sea just east of Saloniki i There are twenty monasteries scat
 tered over the mountain side, in vast i buudings with 800 or 600 monks in each establishment Each sends a
 delegate to the central governing body
 at the capital, Carige. In all there
 are some 10000 people in this minia- i ture republic.
 One of the odd features of the re
 public is the rigidness with which
 i.ll women, and all animals of the female sex, are excluded from it's pre- Cincts. Even hens are not permitted
 to be brought within the confines of
 this community, and guards are sta
 toned across the narrow neck of land
 leading to the peninsula to see that
 nothing feminine shall enter The only
 approach to the female sex is in the
 wild birds which fill the wooded hills.
 It $ claimed that the only woman
 who ever gained entrance was the | daughter of the former British am i ba3Sador at Constantinople, who dis
 guised herself as d midshipman and
 thus galpeo access to the place with her father. A Russian grand-duchess l is also said to have managed to get i inside the sacred precincts, but this
 story is denied by the monks.
 1 The monastic republic is rich in
 treasures which have come down to
 1t in unbroken line since the middle ages, consisting of rare old sacred writ
 ings on parchment, some of them
 bound in gold; jeweled crowns worn 1 by the Byzantian rulers, and the original of the world-famed icon of
 Moscow. The monks of the Russian
 monastery here copied the original icon and sent it to Moscow, where it attracted the thousands of Russian pilgrims which now flock to worship l before it. There are Serb and Greek mona ster; e3 as we'll as Russian, all of 1 them governed by the parliament they have established at the capital, with
 the Greek patriarch at Constantine pie as the final religious authority. The American party bore letters from the Metropolitan of Saloniki, which gave them free access to the little republic Eleven of the twenty mountain monasteries were visited,
 the communities showing their inter- est by hanging out American flags and greeting the party as allied in the entente cause. The republic has it's politics as well as it's religion,
 and it's strong Russian Serb Greek ele-
 ments make it disclaim all pretense of ueutIt lity and proclaim it's position as firm supporter of the Entente al | lies