as only a native can. What can an English ambassador or an American minister in Constantinople, staying perhaps two or three years, and entertained and decorated by the crafty Sultan, know about the internal state of Turkey? Having traveled through the country, lived and preached for years at a time; preached in different cities, including Constantinople, I can see signs of a break-up that a foreigner would not notice. The reason the Turkish population does not increase is this: The army has to be made up of Mohammedans, partly because the Sultan does not put arms into the hands of the Christians, for obvious reasons, since they have no motive to uphold and every motive to fight him, and partly because to be a soldier in Turkey is a holy service, the privilege of Mohammedans alone. As there is a large standing army, nearly all the Mohammedan youths have to become soldiers. Their service begins when they are about twenty years old. The shortest term is five years; for many it is ten; and even after that, there are many who cannot escape. If a young Mohammedan is not married at twenty, obviously he cannot marry until twenty-five anyway, and perhaps thirty,--very late for a country population; if he is married his wife is virtually a widow for five to ten years. Now the reader can see my drift. With marriages so late, and husbands so long absent, Turkish families are small; they do not make good the deaths. And there is a still plainer cause: The soldiers being very poorly fed, and constant fighting going on, ninety per cent. die in the army, and so never have any families; the flower of the nation perishes barren. Those who survive and return are pale and sick, good for nothing, a burden to their families and to the nation. The Armenians have to support the Sultan's army, since they do not furnish it, but they rear families, and are drowning out the Turks. Another cause of decrease is the pilgrimage to Mecca, where Mohammed was born. On an average, a million pilgrims go there every year,--of course not all from Turkey, but most of them, and every year about 50,000 of them die of cholera before reaching home, from the Holy Well (Zemzem sooyi), which is full of unholy foulness; even those who live and return home take that water to their families, and many of the latter die too. Cholera is perpetual in Turkey, and it originates at Mecca. When I was in Marsovan twelve at one time went on the pilgrimage and only four returned. It is a great virtue to die where Mohammed was born, or to drink that water and die, and they are going to him at a rapid rate. Last year, when the English, Russian, and French consuls at Jiddeh, the seaport of Mecca, established a quarantine to detain those coming from Mecca and bringing cholera, they were murdered by the Mohammedan Arabs, who said they were interfering with the sacred religion, and the Sultan had to pay the indemnity.