Angora for several years, yet he had done almost nothing to improve the condition of the province. In other countries such a man would perhaps have been given a professorial chair in some educational institution, but he would hardly have been put in a responsible government post which requires practical administrative capacity. Turkey cannot expect beneficial reforms from such learned theorists, any more than from the ignorant incapable officials who are still entrusted by the Palace with the administration of many of the important provinces. Some years had elapsed between my last trip and the present one into Asia Minor, and during this period I found that serious changes had taken place in the state of the interior. Among other things, the number of useless officials sent by the central Government had increased alarmingly, to the detriment of the inhabitants of the provinces. For instance, there is no piece of land in Angora which could properly be called forest, yet a Department of Woods and Forests had been created there; directors, sub-directors, and several subordinate officials had been sent out by the central government, and in connection with this office new taxes and unaccustomed laws had been imposed upon the inhabitants. The fact is that, in order to show the Powers that it had been introducing reforms, the Government of the Sultan had adopted among other laws the French regulations relating to the management of forests, and a new department had been created in Constantinople. This central department had opened branch offices in all _vilayets_ or counties, and many Palace favourites were sent to them as forest officials, without regard to the circumstances that in some vilayets there was not an acre which could be considered forest land. In order to crush local influence in the government of the provinces, the administrative councils of the towns, on which the notabilities and religious heads of all communities in each locality, Mussulman and non-Mussulman, sit ex officio in company with the officials of the Sultan's Government, were discouraged from attending meetings. [Illustration: A WRESTLING MATCH IN OLDEN DAYS.]