House and Garden 
murderers, assassins, highwaymen and thugs, 
Macedonian liberat ors and Armenian 
conspirators, and subjects of the hate 
of the Grand Vizier; a German doctor 
who foolishly renounced his allegiance; an 
Armenian whose greatest crime may have 
been that he was shrewder than his Turkish 
customer, Albanians, Kurds, Spanish Jews, 
Serbs and gipsies, one and all cluster to¬ 
gether, talking or playing at cards, or at 
dominoes, in the feeble light of the petroleum 
lamps. To these, favorite peddlers have 
free ingress and egress, selling the prison¬ 
ers whatsoever they choose. In addition, 
friends may visit here twice a week, and 
these satisfy any other desires. Relatives 
of the poorer prisoners usually bring pack¬ 
ages of Turkish coffee, which these prisoners 
brew and sell to the others; in order to 
purchase for themselves some of the better 
services allotted rich prisoners. In fact, save only 
for liberty, gold will buy what one will, even to "the 
long handled, deadly knives, that the regulations for¬ 
bid in a Turkish prison. For liberty, however, the 
bribe must be applied higher up, and it is a matter 
of current report that a hundred pounds Turkish, 
properly applied, will release the most desperate mur¬ 
derer; while three hundred pounds permits of the 
assassination of any ordinary citizen, with the as¬ 
surance of the release of the murderer in a compara¬ 
tively short time after incarceration. Criminals of 
the poorer class, on the other hand, will be spurred 
to exhaust every possible source of bribe money and 
then are permitted to remain sitting in jail. 
Life in a Turkish prison is monotonous. Prisoners 
smoke, chat and play dominoes or cards, then chat 
and smoke again. The only interruption is an 
THE ROAD TO MONISTER PRISON 
LANDING PRISONERS AT SALONICA 
some of them almost youths,—such are the favors 
of despotism,—loll the*day through; smoking cigar¬ 
ettes and drinking Turkish coffee. Old shoes serve 
as paper-weights to documents everywhere, and if, 
now and then, some pardon should be blown away, 
what matter, the prisoner will remain until further 
orders. How they ever find what they need is the 
first query of the Occidental, a question simple of 
reply, for nothing in the record way is required, so 
long as the captive is there. 
Beyond the office is built the one great cage in 
which the criminals are confined. The first glimpse 
of it reminds one of the “happy family” cages of 
our large wild animal shows, both in its brightness of 
color (for in the Orient every one wears color, and 
every faith has its particular costume) and also its 
close congestion. Straw, filled with vermin and a 
favorite resort of the black Levantine rat, 
litters the floor, and upon this such pris¬ 
oners as may not possess the where¬ 
withal to purchase beds of the traders sleep 
through the stuffy nights. 
Prisoners of every sort are, of course, 
grouped together. In one corner a Bulgar 
sits, guilty of the crime of having mentioned 
the name or title of the Sultan in the hearing 
of Moslems,—for to mention the name of 
the Defender of the Faith, is to meditate evil 
toward him; otherwise he would not enter 
one’s thoughts. Beyond are two Christians 
who may have been seen conversing secretly 
in a quiet lane by some enemy,—and of 
what but conspiracy could they have 
talked ? Off by himself, in the Achmed 
jail, is a good old man, there close on to fifty 
years, for reasons of which he is not aware; 
nor is he alone in such ignorance. Ming¬ 
ling with these are the other criminals, the 
