Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 June 1886 — NO WOMEN IN THAT TOWN. [ARTICLE]

NO WOMEN IN THAT TOWN.

Peculiaritlna of a City W hore Marriage* * and Births Waver Occur. „ “I know ft city in the United States of over “ 130,000" population where not one vote was cast for Grover Cleveland,” “Where was that?” ' "In Washington.” "I know a stranger place than that. I have been to a town where there had been no births or marriages in hundreds of years, yet people live there and die." The captain of the bark “Malta” crossed his legs, opened and shut the blade of a penknife with his thumb,and Unger and complacently chewed tobacco. The-“ Malts" arrived at New York from the Mediterranean last Friday, with figs and Egyptian onions, * — “Yes,” said Capt. Baldwin, "we ran up the west shore of theJEgean Sea to Haggion Oros, meariing the Greek holy mountain. It is a grand pile of jocks, rising 6, 200 feet straight out of the water, irom the end of a narrow peninsula. What Giberaltar is to the Mediterranean, Haggion Oros is to the Dardanelles. This peninsula runs back from the mountain about 40 i miles, —grand coast —and averages 6 miles wide. It is joined to the larger Chalr cedonian peninsula by a narrow neck of sand. They told me there that Xerxes, the fellow- who led a million of heathen soldiers, cut a canal through -the sapd at that .point for his vessels to sail through. There is another mountain on the peninsula—Mt. Athos. We had an Ohio preacher and his daughter, passengers from Alexandria, on board, and the preacher told us about the peninsula and town of Athos. “ ‘Before Christendom,’ said he ‘recluses used to live at Mt. Athos in holes in the ground. The solemnity inspired by the bare peak of the mountain harmopized well with their minds, bent on wild and mystic thoughts. So,’ said he, ‘after the new religion came the place got to be a popular resort for monks, who didn’t want to live with the rest of mankind; and Greek monks have been going to that peninsula ever since,until now, after 1,600 or 1,800 years, they have formed an ecclesiastical selfgovernment. Under the Byzantine emperors the monks were under no secular control whatever, but now the Turkish government keeps a caimakan there. He has no power, however. His duty is only to observe the monks. The caimakan has two zapteiths, or soldiers, for a body-guard, but they represent the honor of the office more than the power. The community has its own police in the shape of a squad of Albanians. The monks govern themselves by a council of representatives over which the proteros, or president, rules. He is called the First Man of Athos. The proteros can only be boss for three months at a time. He then re-

signs to the next eminent citizen until the honor is shared by'* every man in the council. . " “They wouldn’t let the preacher’s daughter land. No woman is allowed, on any pretense whatever, to set foot in the territory. No female creature of any kind—cow, she goat or mare, or animal capable of giving birth to its kind—is found there. Not even hens are permitted in Athos. So there have been no births, no marrirges, no lovein akings nor scandals there. Just about as many Greek monks get sick of the world and go to Athos as there are those who die. But what a sanctimonious funeral a monk must have there — priests for mourners, hack drivers, pallbearers, grave-diggers, and lookers-on. ”