File:Travels and politics in the Near East (1898) (14804146353).jpg

Identifier: travelspolitic00mill (find matches)
Title: Travels and politics in the Near East
Year: 1898 (1890s)
Authors: Miller, William, 1864-1945
Subjects: Eastern question (Balkan) Balkan Peninsula
Publisher: New York : Frederick A. Stokes
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
Renters correspondent iscalled Ic cliicii iiitcnuifioiuil, by reason of its fondness forevery officer of the Great Powers who will pay it attention.The porters who shoulder your luggage in the drowsyCustom House, where ragged Turkish officials doze overtheir nargilcJi in blissful indifference to all that is going onaround them, are coal-black negroes or dusky Arabs ; sideby side with these hewers of wood and drawers of water,who do all the manual work of Canea, stand groups oftall Cretans with their handkerchiefs tied over their heads,and with that other marked characteristic of these strap-ping islanders, a clear interval of bare leg between theirtop-boots and their baggy blue breeches. Then there areJews in thick mantles, and shabby Turkish soldiers,looking,for all their pluck, a sorry spectacle beside the well-groomed, regularly paid, and smartly trained detachmentof the five Great Powers, whose sentries pace to and froalong the quay—for on my arrival the Austrians were still 323
Text Appearing After Image:
Travels and Politics in the Near East in Crete, five flags, besides the Turkish, still waved on thehistoric mound upon the ramparts, and Germany alonehad laid down the flute. On the day that I landed itwas the turn of the Italians, and a couple of bersaglieriwith fixed bayonets kept some sort of order among themob at the Custom House. Two days later it was theduty of the British to guard the approach to Canea andprevent the landing of arms, and our scarlet-coated soldiers,who paid vast attention to their toilet, shone out resplen-dent among the Orientals around them. Next theAustrians, in their practical blue uniform, came on thescene, and the French and the Russians followed suit.And, to complete the picture, you had but to pass beneaththe old Venetian gateway into the market-place to find theforty crimson-clad Montenegrin gendarmes saunteringalong, head and shoulders over most of the passers-by, withtheir revolvers protruding from the 5/7^7/ at their waists, andever ready to talk of

Note About Images