observe the feasts of Ramazan and Bairam, and with the Christians they observe New Year's Day, the feast of St. John the Baptist, Epiphany, St. Mary Magdalene, Good Friday, and Christmas. On the feast of Epiphany, which they call "Yetas, the Ansairee of Tarsus may be seen in crowds on the banks of the river Cydnus, washing themselves and their clothes and making general holiday. Similarly, on Good Friday, it is not uncommon to see an Ansairee attending a midnight service in the Greek church; passing, with the Christians, under the representation of the Entombment, and hoping thereby to derive the same benefit that the Greeks attach to this ceremony. Their idea about Christmas is very curious. They observe the day as a holiday at the same time as the Greeks, and call it the Feast of Meelad, and offer up to Ali on Christmas Eve the following prayer: "Thou didst manifest in that night thy name, which is thy soul, thy veil, thy throne, to all creatures as a child, and under human form. But at the same time they do not believe in the Crucifixion. There is something repellent to them in the idea of a portion of the Godhead being offered up as a sacrifice for men. But they say that Ali took up Eesa, as they call Jesus, to himself. Ali always, they believe, has an incarnation of the Deity on earth on occasions when it is necessary. This incarnation is a great man, a leader of men; but this is not the invariable rule, and oftentimes the incarnation of Ali upon earth may pass unnoticed by those with whom he mixes. Some of their prayers are couched in really very beautiful and sublime language, full of the rich redundancy of the Arab tongue; and at prayer time great solemnity is observed, when it is forbidden either to take or to give, to sell or to buy, to report the news. to whisper, to be noisy, to be restless, or to tell stories over the myrtle; but let there be silence, listening, attention, and saying of Amen."

The expression over the myrtle" requires some explanation. It is the common expression among the Ansairee of Tarsus for their religious services, from the fact that the floor is strewed with myrtle-branches for the occasion. This may arise from the prevalence of myrtle in those parts, and I do not know if it is used elsewhere. The town of Mersina, close to Tarsus, is called after the myrtle,

which grows there in abundance, as it does all over the littoral of the Cilician plain.

From a Greek, a native of Tarsus, who professed to have seen an Ansairee religious service when hidden in a lemon-tree in a garden, I had an account of one of their secret meetings. Not that one can attach much faith to the words of a Greek of that place; but curiously enough he represented the place as all strewn with myrtles, and I do not imagine that he could have invented this without it really came before his notice. At Tarsus, as I have already stated, the Ansairee are all gardeners, and the love of flowers among the Ansairee women, who go about unveiled, is very marked. All of them wear an extravagant number of flowers about their person, and their reed huts are often gayly decorated with the produce of their gardens. During my stay at Tarsus I was lucky enough to be present at an Ansairee wedding. The festivity took place at one of the reed houses buried in the gardens, and the people were assembled in a courtyard walled in by reeds; in one corner stood the takht or throne, a sort of balcony raised on poles, where the inhabitants sleep in summer to obtain the greatest amount of coolness and the least possible number of insects; in another corner of the yard stood the mud oven, where on most days of the week you may see the Arab women baking their flabby oat-cake. The green trees of the adjoining garden shaded this courtyard. The orange-blossom was just then a little past its best, and the Japanese medlars, the yeni dunyah of the Arabs-the first-fruits of the earth-were just beginning to assume consistency.

Every woman assembled for the wedding was decorated with an enormous quantity of the gay spring flowers, and the effect of the whole was brilliant, though the costumes were not particularly gay. The women danced by themselves while the men looked on; and hired musicians played the flute and the drum to accompany them. The chief woman dancer, an elderly woman for so frivolous an amusement, led the circle of women, waved her handkerchief in the air, and occasionally performed a pas seul; then the circle moved round and round with a sort of mazurka step, sometimes singing, sometimes silent; and all this was done openly with unveiled faces a great contrast to their Turkish sisters, who would think it the height of

immodesty to perform such gyrations before men. The bride sat on a stool in front of the cottage door, dressed in a rich satin dress, and with her eyebrows deeply blackened. She looked particularly selfconscious, but not in the least shy; and the bridegroom bustled about, giving glasses of mastic to the assembled guests. Such ceremonies as these the Turks look upon with undisguised horror, more especially as the Ansairee outwardly profess to be Mohaminedans. The result is that they hate these double faced people even more than the Christians, and if an Ansairee slaughters an animal no pious Mussulman would purchase it in the market. The head sheikh of the Ansairee always goes to the mosque every Friday as a sort of scapegoat for his people, and sometimes others go to make pretence of prayers; but the whole sect is an abomination to the Turks, who cannot say enough that is bad against them.

During my stay at Tarsus I paid a visit to Sheikh Hassan, the chief of the Kalazians and one of the most influential men in Tarsus. There is also another sheikh, the chief of the few Shemali who reside in the place; but his followers are few and his influence is in no way to be compared to that of Sheikh Hassan. He is a very wealthy man, for the Ansairce pay tithes to their chief priest, and he lives in one of the best houses in the outskirts of the town. Hassan Effendi is a dignified Arab, with a handsome benigu face, and a long white beard. He met us at the top of his wooden staircase and conducted us to his divan; he was dressed in a long mustardcolored robe, and wore a white turban bound round his head. Several other influential Ansairee were in the room at the time, and consequently our conversation never for a moment turned on the subject of religion; but we discussed the chances of a good harvest, and he told us about his fields of sesame and the mill in which he grinds his grain. He told us that he, when a boy, about fifty years ago, came to Tarsus with a large number of other Ansairee from the Lebanon in search of work; by reason of their diligence they have prospered and multiplied exceedingly, and are now quite the most influential body of men in the town, and the Turkish gov. ernor does pretty nearly what they wish. Sheikh Hassan has the reputation of being very charitable; every Friday 150 poor

fellaheen assemble at his house, and he gives them alms and food; during the recent famine his liberality was most marked, and in every way he appeared to be a most estimable old gentleman. His room was plain but comfortable, with the usual divan all round it, whitewashed walls, and two texts out of the Koran framed on the walls, to prove to the world what a good Mohammedan he would have them believe he is. On one point, and on one only, did he in the least commit himself. Seeing several women about, and children, I asked him if he was married and if he had any children. He appeared somewhat annoyed at the question, and replied that he was neither married nor had he any children ; and then I recollected that the sheikhs or chief priests of the Ansairee are not supposed to be married or given in marriage, but that the women around them become mothers from time to time by some supernatural agency.

I paid Sheikh Hassan a visit on two occasions, and was quite charmed with his dignified bearing and kindly manners. After death they say he will become a star at once, without having to submit to any of those unpleasant corporal transmigrations which form so integral a part of their religious belief.

This belief in metempsychosis is very curious among the Ansairee. Ordinary Mussulmans, they say, pass into jackals after death; and it is a common saying among them, when the jackals howl at night, "Listen to the Mussulmans calling to prayer. Bad men after death have to "walk in low envelopes,' as their expression goes, making use of the Arabic word "kamees" for the envelope of the body, which exists among us in the word "chemise." For what reason I know not, Christian doctors are supposed to go into very low envelopes indeed, and become swine when this life is over. Jewish rabbis become apes, and so forth.

The stars, they say, are "envelopes of light," the destination of the great and good Ansairee who have, like Sheikh Hassan, distinguished themselves in this life by their charity and integrity; and there are 59,000 of them who form the great "light world," or the inhabitants of the seventh heaven who surround Ali, and are perpetually illuminated by his presence. Most Ansairee pretend to a knowledge of what they did in a former existence,

whether as animals or men; and at Tarsus it is a common theory among them that Frankish travellers, intent on archæological research, come to look for treasures which they remember to have seen in these spots during a former existence.

born a man.

A man, they say, who has not acted rightly in this life may be punished in the next existence by being born a woman, and a woman who does her duty in this life may be rewarded in the next by being Womanhood is considered by them a sort of probationary step between the animal world and the lords of creation, and their women are treated by them with great contempt and never permitted to participate in the sacred mysteries of religion.

The initiation of males into the mysteries generally takes place between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. It is done in solemn conclave, and by several probation ary steps. The youth is brought by his father or nearest male relative, the sheikh or seid hands round the "cup" of wine, and before tasting it the novice has to swear 500 times by the mysteries of the Ain, Min, Sin never to reveal anything he hears. The sheikh's sandal is put on his head, bound on by a white rag, as he swears, and the greatest solemnity is maintained. There have to be twelve sponsors, who also take an oath that they will pursue the youth to death if he reveals their secrets, and will cut him in pieces. It is commonly reported, though with what truth I cannot say, that the tongues of two

renegade Ansairee are kept in pickle at Tarsus, and shown to the youths at their initiation as an awful warning; certain it is that they have kept their secret very well, and that the danger of apostasy must be very considerable. After a probationary period of forty days, further mysterics are revealed to the youth under the same solemn circumstances, and he then has to repeat several of the Ansairce prayers which the sponsors have taught him during the interval. Two sponsors, generally taken from among the leading men, have to become responsible for the good conduct and vigilance of the other twelve, and then at a third meeting the youth has to repeat sixteen prayers to Ali and is admitted into full communion. There are certain higher grades to be attained to only by men of influence and undoubted character; but to these the rank and file of the Ansairee do not aspire. The ordinary or third degree is the one into which every male is admitted, and the secrets of this degree and its passes are known to them all; thus it is possible for an Ansairee of Tarsus or the Lebanon to enter into fellowship with a co-religionist of the north of Persia, bo he Shemali, or Kalazian, or a member of the other two sects. As most of the nomad tribes belong to this religion, it gives them a wonderful bond of union, and must act among them much as freemasonry or the secrets of other orders used to act in the disturbed days of Western Europe. - Cornhill Magazine.