- Well, I've had enough of this. Tell the Pasha
I am greatly obliged to him for his hospitality, and still more for
his kindness in furnishing me with horses, and say that now I must
be off.
Pasha (after hearing the dragoman, and standing up on his divan).
{3} - Proud are the sires, and blessed are the dams of the horses
that shall carry his Excellency to the end of his prosperous
journey. May the saddle beneath him glide down to the gates of the
happy city, like a boat swimming on the third river of Paradise.
May he sleep the sleep of a child, when his friends are around him;
and the while that his enemies are abroad, may his eyes flame red
through the darkness - more red than the eyes of ten tigers!
Farewell!
Dragoman. - The Pasha wishes your Excellency a pleasant journey.
So ends the visit.
CHAPTER II - TURKISH TRAVELLING
In two or three hours our party was ready; the servants, the Tatar,
the mounted Suridgees, and the baggage-horses, altogether made up a
strong cavalcade. The accomplished Mysseri, of whom you have heard
me speak so often, and who served me so faithfully throughout my
Oriental journeys, acted as our interpreter, and was, in fact, the
brain of our corps. The Tatar, you know, is a government courier
properly employed in carrying despatches, but also sent with
travellers to speed them on their way, and answer with his head for
their safety. The man whose head was thus pledged for our precious
lives was a glorious-looking fellow, with the regular and handsome
cast of countenance which is now characteristic of the Ottoman
race. {4} His features displayed a good deal of serene pride,
self-respect, fortitude, a kind of ingenuous sensuality, and
something of instinctive wisdom, without any sharpness of
intellect. He had been a Janissary (as I afterwards found), and
kept up the odd strut of his old corps, which used to affright the
Christians in former times - that rolling gait so comically pompous,
that a close imitation of it, even in the broadest farce, would be
looked upon as a very rough over-acting of the character. It is
occasioned in part by dress and accoutrements. The weighty bundle
of weapons carried upon the chest throws back the body so as to
give it a wonderful portliness, and moreover, the immense masses of
clothes that swathe his limbs force the wearer in walking to swing
himself heavily round from left to right, and from right to left.
In truth, this great edifice of woollen, and cotton, and silk, and
silver, and brass, and steel is not at all fitted for moving on
foot; it cannot even walk without frightfully discomposing its fair
proportions; and as to running - our Tatar ran ONCE (it was in order
to pick up a partridge that Methley had winged with a pistol-shot),
and really the attempt was one of the funniest misdirections of
human energy that wondering man ever saw. But put him in his
stirrups, and then is the Tatar himself again: there he lives at
his pleasure, reposing in the tranquillity of that true home (the
home of his ancestors) which the saddle seems to afford him, and
drawing from his pipe the calm pleasures of his "own fireside," or
else dashing sudden over the earth, as though for a moment he felt
the mouth of a Turcoman steed, and saw his own Scythian plains
lying boundless and open before him.
It was not till his subordinates had nearly completed their
preparations for their march that our Tatar, "commanding the
forces," arrived; he came sleek and fresh from the bath (for so is
the custom of the Ottomans when they start upon a journey), and was
carefully accoutred at every point. From his thigh to his throat
he was loaded with arms and other implements of a campaigning life.
There is no scarcity of water along the whole road from Belgrade to
Stamboul, but the habits of our Tatar were formed by his ancestors
and not by himself, so he took good care to see that his leathern
water-flask was amply charged and properly strapped to the saddle,
along with his blessed tchibouque. And now at last he has cursed
the Suridgees in all proper figures of speech, and is ready for a
ride of a thousand miles; but before he comforts his soul in the
marble baths of Stamboul he will be another and a lesser man; his
sense of responsibility, his too strict abstemiousness, and his
restless energy, disdainful of sleep, will have worn him down to a
fraction of the sleek Moostapha that now leads out our party from
the gates of Belgrade.
The Suridgees are the men employed to lead the baggage-horses.
They are most of them gipsies. Their lot is a sad one: they are
the last of the human race, and all the sins of their superiors
(including the horses) can safely be visited on them. But the
wretched look often more picturesque than their betters; and though
all the world despise these poor Suridgees, their tawny skins and
their grisly beards will gain them honourable standing in the
foreground of a landscape. We had a couple of these fellows with
us, each leading a baggage-horse, to the tail of which last another
baggage-horse was attached. There was a world of trouble in
persuading the stiff angular portmanteaus of Europe to adapt
themselves to their new condition and sit quietly on pack-saddles,
but all was right at last, and it gladdened my eyes to see our
little troop file off through the winding lanes of the city, and
show down brightly in the plain beneath. The one of our party that
seemed to be most out of keeping with the rest of the scene was
Methley's Yorkshire servant, who always rode doggedly on in his
pantry jacket, looking out for "gentlemen's seats."
Methley and I had English saddles, but I think we should have done
just as well (I should certainly have seen more of the country) if
we had adopted saddles like that of our Tatar, who towered so
loftily over the scraggy little beast that carried him.
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