THE CIRCASSIAN SLAVE IN TURKISH HAREMS. 483 



aging the bargain/' This affords a double gratification, that of 

 being rarely valued for themselves, and of being most highly 

 profitable to the family left behind in the mountains. Great 

 was the astonishment of the first Russian crew which " rescued " 

 a vessel-load of Circassians on their way to Turkey, to have the 

 rescued ones entreat not to be returned to their homes, but to 

 be forwarded to their destination. In spite of the combined 

 efforts of Russian and English, their attempts at prohibition of 

 slavery among the Turks have merely driven the trade into an 

 appearance of secrecy here and there, without at all diminishing 

 either demand or supply. 



But a more effectual mode of changing human conditions is at 

 work, silently and subtly undermining the whole system of slav- 

 ery, polygamy, and concubinage in Turkey. Two remarkable 

 letters, written by a Turkish inmate of a harem, appeared in the 

 Nineteenth Century (of August and December, 1890), which give 

 an interesting view of the transformation slowly fermenting in 

 that last stronghold of extreme conservatism on the woman ques- 

 tion the seraglio. The writer, who signs herself "Adalet " (and 

 who therein makes her first essay at writing), explains that the 

 foreign education of Turkish boys inevitably paved the way for 

 that of Turkish girls ; that now sons and brothers are being edu- 

 cated at Oxford or in Paris, and have thus learned that " when her 

 intellect is not crushed by continual fear and impotent ignorance, 

 woman can become the helpmate and support of man " ; that " the 

 view also of the cheerful homes existent in Europe has taught 

 them that one wife is better than twenty slaves ; and as the Turk- 

 ish girls are better adapted by nature to second their views than 

 the Circassians, it is to them that they turned for help. It needed 

 but little time to teach the Turkish mothers what was needed at 

 their hands ; and where before a little French was the maximum 

 of learning acquired by a Turkish girl, she was now taught to 

 read and write in several languages, to play the piano, to draw, to 

 paint in a word, to have as complete an education as any young 

 lady destined to appear in society. This system, of course, in- 

 cluded novel-reading ; and in them the young girl, who before 

 believed that the highest happiness for her was to be tyrannized 

 over by a man she did not know, in common with five or six rivals, 

 suddenly saw opened before her a long vista of unknown bliss, 

 which, to her dazzled eyes, seemed more beautiful than anything 

 promised in paradise. She heard of balls, fetes, parties, where 

 women spoke openly with men who were not doctors or cousins ; 

 she heard, for the first time, that a woman is considered as highly 

 as a man, and may even claim from him the homage which, till 

 now, she thought had been exclusively his prerogative ; she saw 

 in them the description of happy homes, where one wife alone 



