This process is as follows. Given a village of Christians, with Kurds in the neighbourhood: a party of Kurds (men who have probably made their own village too hot to hold them, or who have quarrelled with their chief) come and settle at free quarters in the place as "guests." The villagers cannot turn them out; for the intruders are armed, and they are not; and stingless worker bees can hardly expel sting-bearing drones. If they appeal to the Government for redress, the official is bribed by the intruders to do nothing (the _bakhshish_ being extorted from the villagers); and the answer is made "have not these Mussulmans the right to reside where they like?" If any man does head an attempt to evict them, a "dead set" is made at him till he is worried into leaving the village and his land; and this the Kurds immediately appropriate, forcing the other villagers to work it for them without pay. The village mill is usually one of the first places taken, and a liberal percentage of the corn goes as a fee for the grinding of it. Meantime, what the presence of these fellows means for the "_rayats_" in the way of petty oppression, and what the consequences are to the girls of the village, anyone who has some knowledge of human nature can be left to guess for himself. If the plan prospers other Kurds join; and the leader of the gang presently builds him a small hold, or kala (again with the forced labour of the villagers), and at length the bulk of the Christians are worried out of the country. Only a few are kept, as serfs, to till for their new masters the land that they and their fathers once owned; and what was a Christian village has become Kurd. If ever one sees a Kurdish village which has good fields, and signs of good cultivation, one can be sure that it was originally Christian, and that it has gone through this process. Apart from the brutality of the proceeding, the matter illustrates the impossibility of the Turk as a modern governor, unless he is most radically reformed and supervised. One presumes that what the Government wants is a set of peaceable, tax-paying subjects. Yet here, not one village, but scores of villages, inhabited by peaceable _rayats_ who do pay their taxes and ask for nothing better than to be left alone under Ottoman rule; are allowed to be emptied, and filled up by Kurds who let the land go to waste, who never pay taxes at all, and can be trusted _not_ to fight for the Turk in any real emergency.