WHERE WOMEN ARE UNKNOWN.

Otago Witness, Issue 1901, 10 July 1890, Page 35

WHERE WOMEN ARE UNKNOWN.

It is co'mrnonly thought that men by themselves riiust grow rude and savage, that it is to women we owe all the graces and refinements of social intercourse. Nothing can be further from the truth. - \ •• ■ In all the world (says a recent writer) there is probably not so polite and orderly a society a? that of Athos, European Turkey. As regards hospitality and gracious manner*, the monks of Athes'and their servants pat to shame the most polishedlVestern people. There women are unknown, and disorder, tumult, ' confusion, seem impossible in this land- of peace. If they have differences and squabbles about the right of property, these things are referred to law conrti arid determined by argument of advocates, not by disputing and' high words among the claimants. While life and property are still unsafe on the mainland and on the sister peninsulas of Cassandra and' Lohgos, Athos has been for centuries as secure aB any country in Europe. So far, then, all the evidence is in favour of the restriction. Many of the monks, being carriedto the peninsula in early youth, have completely forgotten what a woman is like, except for the brown, smoky religious pictnres in whioh the form .and features of women are studiously made unlovely and far from human. What strikes the traveller is not the rudeness, the untidiness, the discomfort of a purely male society ; it is rather its dulness and depression. Some of the older monks were indeed jolly enough, and drank their wine and cracked their .jokes freely ; but the novices who attended at the table, the men and boys who had come from the mainland to work as servants, muleteers, or labourers, seemed all suffering under a permanent depression and sadness. The town of Earyes is a most sombre and gloomy place. There are no laughing groups, no singing, no games among the boys. Everyone looks serious, solemn, listless, vacant, aB. the case may be, but devoid of keenness and interest in life.