We now turn to notice the rule of the Turks in Northeastern Arabia, and in their newly-acquired province of Hassa. Bagdad was taken by the Turks in 1638 and that city has ever since been the capital of a Turkish Province. It is unnecessary to enter here into the succession of Pashas and rulers and the attempts to subjugate the Bedouin Arabs. In 1830 the great plague visited all Mesopotamia and when epidemic was at its height the river burst its banks and in one night 15,000 people perished. In 1884 the vilayet of Busrah was separated from that of Bagdad and has since remained under its own governor. The two provinces have all the machinery of Ottoman rule in working order. Except for an occasional outbreak among the Montefik Arabs, Turkey has no trouble to hold Mesopotamia in her grasp. Nor is she at all willing that this rich province should even dream of passing under other rulers. In the year 1891 the Turkish Official Bulletin gave the total revenue from taxation in the Bagdad vilayet alone at 246,304 Turkish pounds. It may be interesting to note in passing the various sources of taxation-money. They are in brief: tax on Arab tents, exemption from military service, tax on sheep, buffaloes, camels, tax on mines (salt), tax on special privileges, tax on forests and timber, tax on fishing, custom dues, tax on shipping, on irrigation, on farming improvements; “receipts from tribunals” (£3,000 tax on justice!) and beside all this “taxes diverses” and “revenues diverses” to make up the budget. All this is legal, ordinary taxation. But the actual conditions of Turkish misrule made it impossible to exercise the inalienable rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” without continual backsheesh to every official. The population of Mesopotamia, Moslem and Jew and Christian are thoroughly weary of Turkish misrule, but no one dares to lift up a voice in protest. They have become accustomed to it; and there is nothing else but to bear it patiently. As for the nomads they have either, like the Montefik, settled down along the rivers to cultivate the soil and eke out a miserable existence, or, like the Aneyza and Shammar tribes, they are as thoroughly independent of the Sultan as when they first appeared in his borders.