

48 GILICIA. 



able chief of the Adana branch of the American mission, 

 who was kind enough to invite me to be his guest 

 during my stay in the town, put the population at 

 about 50,000, — an estimate, however, which he ad- 

 mitted was formed without any accurate data.-^ 



Such in brief are the three chief towns of modern 

 Cilicia, a country of enormous agricultural potentiality, 

 which, under good management, could undoubtedly 

 become, to some extent at any rate, a granary of 

 Europe.^ But it is to be feared that the same methods 

 which have made Turkish government a byword for 

 maladministration and corruption are as prevalent 

 here as they are in any other portion of the Ottoman 

 empire. The result is that the peasants, squeezed 

 beyond endurance to produce a sum of sufficient magni- 

 tude to satisfy the central government, after it has 

 been materially reduced at the hands of the different 

 official harpies who have the handling of it on its 



1 The trade of the vilayet of Adana for the year 1903 amounted to 

 £2,431,844, divided as follows : Imports, £629,450 ; exports, £1,802,394. 

 Of the imports, goods to the value of £209,907 came from the United King- 

 dom, India, Egypt, and Cyprus. Of the exports, goods to the value of 

 £269,365 were destined for the United Kingdom and British dependencies. 

 The chief articles of import are : Alcohol, cotton cloth, and manufactured 

 goods, cloth and woollen goods, cotton yarn, hides, iron-ware, indigo, jute 

 sacks and canvas, machinery, silk stuffs, and sugar. Of export : Barley, 

 cotton, flour, gum tragacanth, linseed, oats, sesame seed, timber, wheat, 

 wool, and yellow berries. 



It is also satisfactory to observe that whereas the number of steamers 

 flying the British flag at Mersina in 1901 was 88, the number in 1903 

 amounted to 111 out of a total of 368. 



2 That the country was at one time an exceedingly rich one is certain. 

 See Schlumberger's ' L'epopee byzantine a la fin du x** siecle ' : " Ce pays de 

 Cilicie, le pachalik actuel d'Adana, pays aujourd'hui desole, . . . etait a 

 I'epoque on y penetra I'armee de Nicephore, d'une richesse infinie, d'une 

 fertilite incomparable. Les Sarrasins solidement etablis dans toutes les 

 anciennes cites Byzantines, y avaient apporte leurs admirables procedcs 

 d'agriculture, leur systfeme perfectionne d'irrigation. Toute cette campagne 

 etait un vaste jardin, et chaque ete les belles moissons Ciliciennes tombaient 

 abondantes sous la faucille des moissonneurs musulmans.'' 



