I had seen enough of the
horrors of suppression of Christian discontent by the Mussulmans of
Crete, but the brutality of the Slavonic Islam in time of peace was
other and bitterer than the Cretan, and the miserable remnant of
escaped rayahs of Herzegovina was the very ragged fringe of humanity.
I wish every statesman who had ever favored tonics for the "sick man"
could have stood where I did and have seen the long reiteration of the
damning accusation against the "unspeakable Turk" in these escapes of
the peaceful stragglers from massacre and rapine which every rising
in the provinces of Turkey brings forth for the shame of our
civilization. There were whole families in such rags that they would
not have been permitted to beg in the streets of any English city,
lucky even to have escaped as families; parents whose daughters, even
more miserable, had not been permitted to escape to starvation.
We found at Grahovo the body of which those we had seen were the
fringe,--a mass of despairing, melancholy humanity, brooding over the
misery to come, homeless, foodless, and the guests of a people only
less poor than themselves, the hospitable hovels of the Montenegrins
housing a double charge.
I was desirous to learn from themselves the details of their
oppression, and my friend questioned one group as to what they had to
complain of. It was practically everything but death,--their cattle
taken, their crops ravaged or reaped by the agas, the honor of wives
and daughters the sport of any Mussulman ruffian who passed their way.
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