Note 250 — Chapter VI · THE PANIC IN SERAJEVO.

The Rev. W. Denton, The Christians in Turkey, p. 44. Hilferding (Ruskaja Besiéda, quoted by M. Yriarte, op. cit.) gives a frightful account of how a Bosnian landlord, a Beg, extorted money from six rayahs by suspending them over a fire of maize-stalks. ‘Les six raïas ne furent rendus la liberté qu’à moitié asphyxiés, après que la douleur leur eut arraché la promesse de donner tout ce qu’ils possédaient.’ In the forthcoming work of Mr. Stillman, the Times’ correspondent, on the ‘Insurrection in the Herzegovina,’ the reader will find (p. 9) an account of horrible instances of judicial torture perpetrated on a rayah family near Trebinje, in the period immediately preceding the revolt. Two were put in long wooden boxes like coffins and rolled down hill: others were stood upright with their heads in a hole in the floor of the prison which allowed them to rest on their shoulders, and splinters of wood were then driven under their finger-nails.