Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1877 — Turk and Locomotive. [ARTICLE]

Turk and Locomotive.

Tira Turks are superstitious, believing in genii and demons, to whom they attribute any physical effect which passes their comprehension. An English engineer, engaged in building a railway in Bulgaria, thus describes the effect of the first locomotive in that country: We often used to say, writes Mr. Barklev, “ Won’t the locomotive astonish the Turks when it first begins to turn ?” At last the day arrived, and, as we went up and down the first few miles, whistling loudly, we oast our eyes up to the town above to see the crowds rush out. Twenty or thirty slipshod rayahs came lounging out, and a few Turkish children, hut nut one lull-grown Turk, and those we passed hardly looked at the train, and shewed no astonishment. After the trains had been running a month, I asked my servant Mustapha what he thought of it. He answered: “ Tehellaby, I have not seen it; I am a man and don’t go running after Bights like a child." ■ -f Man or child, Mustapha, if you don’t go and see it to-morrow, I will make you eat pork- for I won’t live with such an uninteresting fooL”

He did 1 go and look riext day, and not only that, but afterward, over a cup of coffee at the khan, listened to a lecture on steam engines, delivered by a, Turk who quite understood them. ■"They may be very fine things,. Tebellaby, and you English may make them useful; but Gpd defend a Mussulman from having anything to do with them. We don’t like demons and their -‘works; even if we could catch pn«, and axe quite content with the means of locomotion we now possess. Nothing cab equal* 4 horse, and a bullock cart is enough for anyone.” « What do you mean about demons ? ’ I asked. : “ Why. TebeUaby, ia it not a fact, as •the lecturer told us, that in England you trap a strong young demon, and shut him up in that great firebox on wheels, where you induce him to turn ft crank connected frith the wheels, and pay him fordoing Id by giving him cela water to allay his 1 afterward talked to lots of villagers about this, and found the demon theory had taken deep root, and ottktt. I have seen a man stripped, scourging and rubbing at his garments, because a drop of water from a passing locomotive had fallen on them, which he believed to have been produced by the demon spitting.