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Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/324

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274
TRAVELS AND DISCOVERIES

community spends 10,000 piasters annually. This sum is collected from the inhabitants generally. The scholars are about 200 in number, including some girls. This school has existed about twenty-five years.

About two-thirds of the population can neither read nor write.

There is a Turkish castle here, with a garrison consisting of 180 local militia and 24 artillerymen.

Tenedos was ruined by the Russians when they occupied it in 1807. Many rich Turks formerly lived here. It was once covered with trees, which were destroyed in the Greek Revolution.

A strong north wind springing up, the Pasha abandoned his intention of visiting Lemnos and Samothrace, and we returned to Mytilene.


XXIV.

Mytilene, September 6, 1854.

This morning I went at sunrise to see the ceremony of the Courban Bairam. The Governor-General turned out with his irregular guards, the militia from the castle, and some marines from the ships of war, in a grand procession to the principal mosque. He was dressed in that rich gold embroidery in which the Turks take so much pleasure; he was mounted on a magnificent horse, who walked mincingly, "as if he told the steps;" before him marched the half-drilled rank-and-