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MRAP Directory 13
Page 05
The soldiers thus designated are not given rifles, nor are they trained for service, but are simply employed as servants to the regular soldiers. It is easy to understand that no one can endure such conditions of military life, the result being that each and every one of these non-Moslems sells whatever property he has in order to pay the ransom and get away from the army, and from Turkey as well. In ten days, since this peculiar recruiting began, fully ten thousand Greeks found a way of escaping from Constantinople, many of them finding a refuge in the free and hospitable United States. This getting away is not so easy, writes the same correspondent, because officials of the various ports are exacting heavy sums from the fugitives before letting them go. Graft and extortion in this case reign supreme, and it costs anywhere from three to fifteen pounds ($13 to $70) to "buy" a police or port official. This process, originating in Constantinople, is widespread in the provinces, and the sums paid in this way by the non-Moslems to escape military service amount to millions. "Let the infidels pay!" say the Turkish officials. "They have taken our ships, and they have to pay for it."
This charter, as will be readily seen, could not please the Virginians, since the entire territory conveyed by it was part of the grant of 1609 to the London Company for Virginia. But as this and subsequent charters had been annulled in 1624, the new colony was held by the Privy Council to have the law on its side, and Lord Baltimore was left to make his preparations undisturbed. He fitted out two vessels, the Ark and the Dove, and sent them on their voyage of colonization. They went by the way of the West Indies, arriving off Point Comfort in 1634. Sailing up the Potomac, they landed on the island of St. Clement's, and took formal possession of their new home. Calvert explored a river, now called the St. Mary's, a tributary of the Potomac, and being pleased with the spot began a settlement. He gained the friendship of the natives by purchasing the land and by treating them justly and humanely.
The Greek kingdoms in Asia, founded by the successors of Alexander the Great, bore within them the seeds of decay. The mighty kingdom of SYRIA, which had once extended from the Indus to the AEgean Sea, had now lost some of its fairest provinces. The greater part of Asia Minor no longer owned the authority of the Syrian kings. PONTUS was governed by its own rulers. A large body of Gauls had settled in the northern part of Phrygia, which district was now called GALATIA after them. A new kingdom was founded in Mysia, to which the name of PERGAMUS was given from its chief city; and Attalus, who was king of Pergamus during the Second Punic War, formed an alliance with Rome as a protection against Syria and Macedonia. The king of Syria at this time was Antiochus III., who, from his victory over the Parthians, had received the surname of the Great.
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