226 HENRY HILL GOODELL 



and high-priced goods of female apparel. But, with the 

 priceless blessings of free trade, the country was flooded 

 with a cheap imitation made by machinery. The flocks 

 dwindled away, the occupation of whole villages was gone, 

 and abject poverty and ruin overtook the wretched inhabit- 

 ants. 



You will perhaps have noticed the absence of any allusion 

 to the swine among the domestic animals enumerated. The 

 reason is obvious. Considered as unclean beasts by both 

 Turk and Jew, it is only in Christian villages that they are 

 to be found. What was cursed under the Mosaic dispensa- 

 tion and continued to be cursed under the Mohammedan, 

 is still looked upon with suspicion by the faithful; and, 

 though their mouths may water as the delicate aroma of 

 roast suckling pig arises on the air, yet they rigidly abstain 

 from any participation. Two infallible signs, one negative 

 and one positive, disclose the character of a Christian town 

 in Turkey, — the absence of minarets and the presence of 

 pigs. In consequence of the pig being in this manner a 

 Christian animal, there is an oppressive tax on pigs, levied 

 when the animal is three months old. The risk incurred 

 from the payment of so large a tax (ten piasters) on so young 

 an animal is so great that many of them are killed shortly 

 after birth, and an important article of food is lost to the 

 peasantry. 



I have rambled on longer than I intended, for one re- 

 miniscence has led on to another; but I cannot close without 

 alluding to one more fact which must be patent to every 

 thoughtful observer traveling in the Levant to-day, and 

 that is, the constancy of the Eastern mind to itself, and the 

 immutability of its customs and observances. The same 



