But though “Young Turkey” showed no signs of life it was not dead. In Constantinople and other big Turkish cities the visitor from Europe would never hear the movement spoken of; the word _hurriet_ was, so to speak, expunged from the Turkish dictionary, and to have been heard uttering it would have brought denunciation as a traitor. But in far parts of the Empire tongues wagged more freely, and the memory of the reformers was kept green. In the autumn and winter of 1879 I was wandering over that wildest region of all Europe, Northern Albania, and there I found that men were speaking very plainly indeed; for the _espionage_ system was not then fully organised, and at any rate it had not reached that lawless province, where the Government was helpless, and inspired neither respect or fear. At the period of my visit, Albania, a country which, as I shall show later, took a prominent part in the recent revolution, was in a state of positive anarchy—the _gendarmerie_ on strike, the mutinous soldiers refusing to salute their officers, neither having received pay for months, while the natives held seditious meetings publicly and unmolested in the mosques of the garrison towns, in which rebellion against the Porte was fearlessly advocated. The army officers with whom I conversed despaired of their country, and those who had been in Constantinople said that the one hope for Turkey—an administration under the direction of men of Midhat Pasha’s stamp—had been destroyed. The army doctors in Scutari—for the most part Armenians—were still more outspoken, and advocated the deposition and even killing of the Sultan. One of these doctors described the condition of the country to me in the following words: “You have no idea of what a corrupt, vile thing this Turkish Government is. The Court eats all the country. We who work, the _employés_ of the State, the doctors, the soldiers, never receive any pay now. As long as they think they can obtain our labour for nothing, not a _para_ will they let slip through their fingers. Look at my case. I have been a doctor in the Turkish army for forty years. I have been through the Crimean war, over all Asia, in the service of Turkey. I am entitled to a good pension. I have been day after day to the offices at Constantinople, and put my case before the authorities. They put me off with all sorts of fair promises, but I knew what these meant, so went to them day after day, and worried them so much that they decided to get rid of me in some way. ‘There is a permanent hospital in Scutari in Albania,’ they told me. ‘In consideration of your long service we appoint you as head doctor of it. Start at once to your post.’ Now that I have travelled all this way, at my own expense, mind you, what do I find? The permanent hospital no longer exists—it is a myth, and they knew it in Constantinople all the time, and no doubt chuckled merrily, when I had turned my back, at the