acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

124 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
licence ; higher grades of leaf may be exported,
but the remainder must be sold to the monopoly
company at low prices fixed by the company.
Between the price paid to the grower and the
price ultimately paid by the consumer is an enormous
profit, part of which reaches the State.
So between districts wliich grow tobacco and districts
which do not, there is abundant incentive to
illicit trade. Every man who owns a pack-animal
is a possible smuggler ; every man who takes his
animal or vehicle into a tobacco country becomes a
smuggler to a greater or lesser degree. Asia Minor
has few roads, but a perfect maze of tracks and byways
; a smuggler therefore has more chan a sporting
chance ; he finds risk and excitement as certainties,
and gain as the sure reward of success. It is said
that of all tobacco grown at least one-half escapes
the monopoly.
In these circumstances smuggling has become a
calhng with rules and an etiquette, and almost a
code of honour. It offers a career to men of spirit
as commerce dignified ; commerce with a halo ;
commerce
made possible for a gentleman. A Circassian
chief, for instance, the head of a clan, cannot be
imagined as a mere bazaar merchant—he has neither
aptitude nor patience nor humility enough—even if
But he
custom permitted him to follow the calling.
goes readily into the contraband trade, finds in it
opportunities for exercising his military instincts and
daring, and by use of these qualities makes profit
and reputation. At last, if a really great man in his
profession, he reaches the point where the monopoly
company will buy him off with a pension. Honourable
retirement on these terms is, of course, the
reward of only a few ; but it happens sometimes
when forcible means of suppression have failed over
a long period.
There is almost a flavour of border warfare in
tobacco smuggling as carried on by such professional