After A Careful Selection, I Obtained Two Pairs Of
Very Beautiful Animals, Quite Equal In Size To Ordinary English Oxen,
For Which I Paid Twelve Shillings Per Diem, Including The Drivers And
All Expenses Of Fodder.
I also engaged the necessary riding mules, as
the vans were not intended for personal travelling, but merely for
luggage and for a home at night.
Our servants consisted of Amarn (my
Abyssinian, who had been with me eight years, since he was a a boy of
nine years old in Africa), a Greek cook named Christo, who had served in
a similar capacity upon numerous steamers, and a young man named Georgi,
of about twenty-one, who was to be made into a servant. This young
fellow had appeared one day suddenly, and solicited employment, while we
were staying at Craddock's Hotel; he was short, thickset, and possessed
a head of hair that would have raised the envy of Absalom: in dense
tangle it would have defied a mane-comb. Georgi had a pleasant
expression of countenance which did not harmonise with his exterior, as
his clothes were in a ragged and filthy condition, his shoes were in
tatters, and trodden down at the heel to a degree that resembled boats
in the act of capsizing; these exposed the remnants of socks, through
the gaps of which the skin of his feet was exhibited in anything but
flesh-colour. It is dangerous to pick up a "waif and stray," as such
objects of philanthropy frequently disappear at the same time as the
forks and spoons.
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