The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume IIStillman, William James
History
The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II
Stillman, William James
Journalists -- Biography; Stillman, William James, 1828-1901
At last an English gentleman named Rogers, who lived at Syra, an
ex-officer of the English army, offered to carry me over to Canea
on his yacht of twelve tons, and take the consequences. I found the
consulate, like the position in Rome, deserted, the late consul having
been a Confederate who had gone home to enlist, I suppose, for he
had been gone a long time, and the archives did not exist. There was
nothing to take over but a flag, which the vice-consul, a Smyrniote
Greek, and an honest one, as I was glad to find, but who knew nothing
of the business of a consul, had been hoisting on all fête days for
two or three years, waiting for a consul to come. I was received with
great festivity by my protégés, the family of the vice-consul, and
with great ceremony by the pasha, a renegade Greek, educated in
medicine by the Sultana Valide, and in the enjoyment of her high
protection; an unscrupulous scoundrel, who had grafted on his Greek
duplicity all the worst traits of the Turk. As, with the exception of
the Italian consul, Sig. Colucci, not one of the persons with whom I
acted or came in contact in my official residence survives, unless it
may be the commander of the Assurance, an English gunboat, of whose
subsequent career I know nothing, I shall treat them all without
reserve.
The Pasha, Ismael, I at once found, considered it his policy to
provoke a conflict with any new consul, and either break him in or
buy him over; and the occasion for a trial of strength was not
long coming. The night patrol attempted to arrest the son of the
vice-consul in his house, in which I had been temporarily residing
while the house which I took was being put in order, and over which
the flag floated. I at once demanded an apology, and a punishment for
the _mulazim_ in command of the patrol. The pasha refused it, and I
appealed to Constantinople. The Porte ordered testimony to be taken
concerning the affair, and the pasha took that of the mulazim and the
policeman on oath, and then that of my witnesses without the oath,
the object being, of course, to protest against their evidence on
the ground that they would not swear to it. I immediately had their
evidence retaken on oath and sent on to Constantinople with the rest.
The Porte decided in my favor, and ordered the apology to be made by
the mulazim. As the affair went on with much detail of correspondence
between the _konak_ and the consulate for some weeks, it had attracted
the general attention of our little public, and the final defeat of
the pasha was a mortification to him which he made every effort to
conceal. He denied for several weeks having received any decision from
the Porte, in the hope, probably, that he would tire me out; but as
I had nothing to do, and the affair amused me, I stuck to him as
tenaciously as he to his denials, and he had to give in. It was a very
small affair, but the antagonism so inaugurated had a strong effect on
the Cretans, who found in me an enemy of their tyrant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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