postal service through the Principality, and of maintaining telegraphic communication. These two points shall also be determined in the manner and within the period of time indicated above.]
[Art. XI. The Mussulman proprietors or others who fix their personal residence outside the Principality may retain their estates by having them farmed or administered by others. Turco-Bulgarian Commissions shall sit in the principal centres of population, under the superintendence of Russian Commissioners, to decide absolutely in the course of two years all questions relative to the verification of real property, in which either Mussulmans or others may be interested. Similar commissions will be charged with the duty of regulating within two years all questions relative to the mode of alienation, working, or use for the benefit of the Sublime Porte of the property of the State, and of the religious endowments (Vacouf).
At the expiration of the two years mentioned above all properties which shall not have been claimed shall be sold by public auction, and the proceeds thereof shall be devoted to the support of the widows and orphans, Mussulman as well as Christian, victims of the recent events[1].]
Danube.[Art. XII. All the Danubian fortresses shall be razed. There shall be no strongholds in future on the banks of this river, nor any men-of-war in the waters of the Principalities of Roumania, Servia, and Bulgaria, except the usual 'stationnaires' and the small vessels intended for river-police and Custom-house purposes. The rights, obligations, and prerogatives of the International Commission of the Lower Danube are maintained' intact.]
Art. XIII. The Sublime Porte undertakes to render the passage of Soulina again navigable, and to indemnify the private individuals who have suffered loss by the war and the interruption of the navigation of the Danube, applying for this double charge a sum of five hundred thousand francs from the amount due to the Sublime Porte from the Danubian Commission.
Bosnia and Herzegovina[Art. XIV. The European proposals communicated to the Ottoman Plenipotentiaries at the first sitting of the Constantinople Conference shall immediately be introduced into Bosnia and Herzegovina, with any modifications which may be agreed upon in common between the Sublime Porte, the Government of Russia, and that of Austria-Hungary,
The payment of arrears of taxes shall not be required, and the current revenues of these provinces until the 1st March, 1880,
- ↑ See the 'final paragraph,' p. 348, infra.
