BASHEE' or BASHI ISLANDS, a small cluster in the line between Luzon, the chief of the Philippine chain, and Formosa, the lat. and long. being respectively 21° n. and l22' cast. Politically, they are a dependency of the Philippines, having been colonized by the Spaniards in 1783. Physically, they form a link in the vast archipelago which, from Formosa to Sumatra inclusive, connects the s.e. of China with the w. of Malacca. They were discovered iu 1687 by Dampier, who called them the Bashi Islands, on account of the popularity among the islanders of an intoxicating liquor of that name. Pop. about 8000.
are irregular troopers in the pay of the Sultan. Very few of them are Europeans; they are mostly Asiatics, from some or other of the pashalics in Asiatic Turkey. They are wild turbulent men, ready to enter the Sultan's service under sonic leader whom they can understand, and still more ready to plunder whenever an oppor tunity offers. During the Russo-Turkish war of 1854, etc., they had many encounters
with the enemy in that kind of irregular warfare which the Russians intrust to Cossack horsemen; but the peaceful villagers had almost as much distrust of the B. B. as of the Russians. When the British government resolved, in 1855, to take into pay a Turkish contingent, to aid in the operations of the war, a corps of B.B. was put in charge of an Indian officer, but the task of reducing them to discipline was not completed when the war ended. Their ferocity was exhibited in the Servian war, but most relentlessly in the massacre of Batak, where, in May 1876, under Achmet Agha, they slew over 1000 defenseless Bulgarians in a church in which they sought refuge.