THE DECAY OF BRIGANDAGE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13997, 2 September 1907, Page 6

THE DECAY OF BRIGANDAGE.

Brigandago as a lucrative profession is decidedly on tho decline in Europe. It is absolutely a thing of tho past in Spain and Italy. When a desperado takes to. tho woods and tho hills in these countries he is either a. fugitive from justice or else ho is out for revenge, not money. East of tho Adriatic there is still something doing. Tho profession got a bad setback in Grace in 1886, when, on September 11, 15 gentlemen who had led a merry life on its proceeds had their heads chopped off; but since 1902 them has beon a revival, and predatory bands roam through tho mountains and the Pelopannesus. They aro careful to confine their activity to their own countrymen, however. Their profits a-ro greatly veduccd by doing go, but so is tho danger. . In Turkish territory brigandage is always in existenco, but in recent years thero have been no coups liko the extortion of 75,000 dollars ransom for Mr Ransom, an Englishman, at Saloiu'ka, a few years ago, or tho capturo of Miss Stone in 1901, 'which brought somewhere near £20,000 to tho Macedonian bands, half bandits, half revolutionists, who held her and her companion, Mmc. Tsilka, prisoners for five months. Of late the brigands have oontented themselves with bagging local magistrates and well-to-do merchants in the towns of their region, whoso ability to pay for their lives the brigands can estimate to a dollar. The country is short, of railroads, and tho victims aro usually- caught riding or staging through tho wild forest roads on business journeys from one town to another. Sometimes, however, raids are made into towns and villages where no troops aro stationed, and men who can pay aro taken out of their beds. Tiio prisoners aro always well treated—as Miss Stone was— but when the payment of the sum demanded is too long delayed the brigands nave a pleasant habit of first cutting off the victim's ear and later his hand and sending them to his relatives as a hint that they mean business. Only two cases of brigandago are roportcd from the more westerly mountains in recent times. One was in the Tyrol, where the members of a family long suspcctcd of marauding seized a member of the Swiss Diet and carried him off into the wilds. Tho prisoner and his friends stood firm and' irofuscd to pay any blackmail, and the prisoner was killed. This took place last year. Very recently a desperado named Guiseppe Crealin .built himself a retreat on Monte Zcda. near Lako. Maggiore, at an elevation of 7000 ft. He terrorised tXc entiro country for-a couple of years, leyy.iiig blackmail on everyono who could afford to pay, but steering clear of the tourists, in whose cause the Government might get unduly active of they wero molested. Ho had no'band, not a single man associated with him; but, as is usually the ease with Italian brigands, the w-hoie country was dotted over with sweethearts, who brought him food and ammunition,' warned him as to the movements of tho police, and gave him tips on good things to pull off. He is said to have got together a large sum of money, and he was on tho point of quitting the wild life and settling down peacefully- in some city whore lie wasn't known when a party of carabiniers rushed his stronghold one morning and carried him off a prisoner. He will probably spend the rest of his life in prison.—Boston Globe.