THE GREEKS UNDER TURKISH BONDAGE. 1 37 and its neighborhood had endeavored to save themselves by emigrating to Hydra, to Spezzia, and even to Asia Minor. Different travellers tell of deserted villages and districts in Morea. Greeks went to Asia Minor where they were sub- ject only to the land tax and the kharadsh. The poor wretches by nomadic movements, as Bikelas says, " strove to find some amelioration in their condition by passing from one part to another of the Ottoman Empire. " This was merely like the action of a sick man who seeks to find relief by thrusting his aching limbs first into one and then into another part of his bed of pain. "The de- population of some provinces," testifies M. Ju- chereau de Saint-Denis, "has been so marked that, out of twenty flourishing villages which for- merly existed in the neighborhood of Aleppo, it is now scarcely possible to reckon four or five. The tyj-anny of the provincial governors drives the peasants to seek refuge in the town, and, once they are there, starvation soon decimates them." Wealth, whether honestly or dishonestly accu- mulated, was a danger to its possessor; even the Sultan would lie in wait, and still much more the pashas who had bought their offices and acted in their provinces like hungry wolves. All offices had to be bought; even the Sultan
