the end of that time his friends obtained | respondence with the brigands, and the his release on payment of $3,400 and negotiations were afterwards carried on twelve muskets. In July, 1864, Mr. Beale by a representative of the Greek governwas captured near Florence. His case ment, but they were not carried to a sucwas exceptionally fortunate. 12,000 scudi cessful issue, and on April 21, Mr. Herwas the sum demanded for his ransom, bert, Mr. Vyner, and Mr. Lloyd were murbut he was released the day following his dered. In this case the king of Greece capture without any payment, his guards gave Mrs. Lloyd £1,000 for her immebeing under the mistaken impression that diate wants, and the Greek government the amount had been obtained. Mr. and afterwards granted her an indemnity of Mrs. Williams Moens, the Rev. J. C. M. £10,000. Messrs. John and Anthony Aynsley and Mrs. Aynsley, were taken Bonell were captured in Spanish terrinear Battipaglia, Italy, on May 15, 1865. tory, near Gibraltar, on May 21, 1870. The ladies were released the same day, The sum of $27,000 was demanded and and Mr. Aynsley on the day following to advanced by the governor of Gibraltar, arrange about the ransom, which was and both captives were released after a fixed at £8,500. Negotiations carried on short detention. The amount of ransom by the British consul at Naples and the was subsequently repaid by the Spanish friends of the captives, at a cost of government. Mr. and Mrs. Robert Ran£44 10s. to the former, and £800 to the kin and Mrs. Taylor were taken near Delatter, resulted in the release of Mr. nia, Spain, on March 18, 1871, but at once Moens on August 25, on payment of released on payment of £200. Mr. Ar£5,100 by the friends. Lord John Her- thur Haseldin was captured near the Rio vey, the Hon. H. Strutt, and Mr. Coore Grande Mines, in the Sierra Morena, are the next victims; they were taken in Spain, on July 3, 1874. Four millions of Arcanania, Greece, on December 8, 1865, reals (about £40,000) was the sum first and on the same day the two first were fixed as a ransom, but this was soon rereleased in order to obtain £3,000 as ran- duced to a quarter of the amount, and som. The amount was paid on the 15th, after nine days' captivity Mr. Haseldin when Mr. Coore was at once set at liberty. was released on payment by his brother Mr. John D. Mirrilies was taken prisoner of about £6,000. Mr. Edward Rowse near Irapuato, in Mexico, on November was captured on May 3, 1875, near Hien15, 1866, by an armed band claiming to be delaencina, Spain, but was only detained a portion of the Liberal forces of General for a few hours, while his servant fetched Antillon, but he paid the $2,000 demanded 100,000 reals (about £1,000), which he of him, and was only detained about four agreed to pay for his liberty. On Novemdays. In each of the above instances the ber 4, 1876, Mr. Forester Rose was made ransoms were paid by the captives, and no prisoner close to the railway station at repayment or compensation was made by Lecara, near Palermo, Sicily, and various the governments of the respective coun- demands from £5,000 to £2,000 made for tries where the outrages occurred. On his release. Negotiations were carried December 19, 1869, Mr. John Francis Fur-on by the captive's brothers, who evenber was captured near Guanaxato, Mex- tually obtained his liberty for about £1,600, ico, and on the following day his body was found with an explanation attached to it that he had been murdered for having refused to ransom his life for $5,000. No compensation was ever exacted. On April 11, 1870, a party, consisting of Lord and Lady Muncaster, Mr. E. H. C. Herbert, Mr. F. G. Vyner, and Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd and child, were captured by Greek brigands near the bridge of Pikermes, about a dozen miles from Athens. The enormous sum of £50,000 was first demanded for ransom, but this was afterwards reduced to £25,000 and an amnesty. Lady Muncaster and Mrs. Lloyd and child were released the same day, and Lord Muncaster was sent back on the 13th, to arrange about the ransom. The English and Italian ministers opened cor but they estimated their expenses at 20,ooo lire, besides the injury done to the firm by suspension of their business, and they claimed 125,000 lire (about £5,000) from the Italian government. Neither in this instance, however, or in either of the three previous ones, was any repayment or compensation ever made. The two last cases mentioned are those of Colonel Synge and Mr. and Mrs. Suter and child. In both these instances the ransom money - about £11,000 in the first case and £14,000 in the second-has been advanced by the British government, but the cases are marked "not concluded." Should these amounts not be repaid by the Turkish government or by the relatives of the sufferers, they will be the only instances in which the cost of liberating captives from brigands has fallen upon | most immediate present of Risano, the the British government. From The Pall Mall Gazette. AN ANCIENT ILLYRIAN CAPITAL. IN the inmost "fiord" of the Bocche di Cattaro lies the little town of Risano, the Rhizon or Risinium of Greeks and Romans, that once gave those wondrous "mouths," or rather gorges, of Alp-girt sea, called to-day after Cattaro, their ancient title of "Rhizonic Gulf." At present Risano is little better than a large, wellto-do village; but in Roman days it was a great city, and in days before the Roman conquest it rivalled Skodra itself as an Illyrian capital. Its rock citadel gave a secure refuge to the pirate queen Tenta - still remembered in the folklore of the spot when she fled from her Roman chastisers; and rude Illyrian coins, of which the soil of Risano is wonderfully prolific, show that here lived and reigned a line of Illyrian kings at a time when to north and south of this ancient home of vikings Rome had made good her footing on the eastern Adriatic shore. For here, so nature has willed it, more than at any other spot along the whole Dalmatian littoral, the people of the shore and the people of the Alpine mainland are bound together by common bonds of interest and sympathy. The Greek and Roman colonies on this coast shrank as much as possible from direct contact with old IIlyrian barbarism; their founders chose for them island or peninsular sites, or sites at least isolated from the grim highlands around by rich plains and wellwatered valleys, whence they could draw an independent sustenance. Hence the dualism in all Dalmatian history; the abrupt contrasts between culture and savagery; the perpetual strife between the sea and the mountain, between the GrecoRoman or Italian citizens of the coast towns and the rugged highlanders, Illyrian and Slav successively, of the inland ranges. workings of this physical law will be seen to have been in every age invariable. When the Romans succeeded in wresting the remainder of the coast from the Illyrian aborigines, and in confining them to the more inaccessible mountain plateau of the interior, the chidren of the soil still found a vent for their old piratic enterprise in this cliff-guarded "fiord." Later, when, together with the lands behind it, Rhizon finally became a Roman city, the inhabitants still clung tenaciously to their native traditions. The blood of Rhizon remained Illyrian. On her monuments of Roman date Illyrian names still occur, but slightly disguised, and the piety of her citizens still kept up the worship of her Illyrian Lar. When the Slavs conquered Illyricum the Roman nationality and language continued to hold its own on the island and peninsular sites of the Dalmatian coast, but Risano as ever followed the fortunes of the interior. It became Serb, and has remained Serb to this day. When the Turk conquered the Serbian lands of the interior Risano passed, with the midlands behind it, under Ottoman dominion, and was one of the places on the Adriatic coast that longest remained in Ottoman possession. To-day Risano remains true to her inland connections. Here alone among all the coast towns of the Adriatic the whole population, almost without exception, belongs to the orthodox Serbian belief. Politically small as it is, Risano remains the focus of Serbian national life on the Dalmatian coast. The town is backed by the highlands of Crivoscia, the home of the wildest and most independent of the south Dalmatian tribes, administratively included in the district of Risano, and the Risanotes themselves are maritime Crivoscians. And like the highlanders beyond, like the Montenegrins and Herzegovinians, there can be no doubt that, though in language and ideas the people are Serb to the backbone, much of the blood of the older Illyrian occupants has passed into their veins. The long, finecut face, the aquiline nose, so generally met with among the Risanotes, will be recognized by the ethnologist as Albanian characteristics. They are recognized in the Bocche as a peculiar people, and sometimes have been called its Genoese. They are subtle and not over-scrupulous in their dealings, yet friends to their friends, thoroughly imbued with the aims of Serbian nationality, and in their fiery spirit of insurgency still true Illyrians. But Risano, unlike the generality of these coast towns, could have no separate existence from that of its back country. The naked mountains frown directly over it; the Alpine pass descends to form its main street; the sea shuts it in in front. It forms a natural sea outlet for the highlands, and its fortunes are linked perforce with those of the Dinaric lands behind it. Glancing from the remotest past to the |