Our government permitted only two women per in the transport.'

company

Four wives for two hundred men!' exclaimed the punchy old Yuze Bashi of the Bombardiers, turning up his round black eyes in wonderment, and gathering the most peculiar ideas from my words; one wife for fifty men! It is enough to make every hair in the beards of the seventy imaums stand on end with astonishment!'

6

Hush,' whispered the Mir Alai, in a tone of rebuke; 'beware what you say, Hussein; they have come to fight with us against the Muscovites, and may the Prophet-he who knoweth all things-shed a ray of light upon the darkness of their souls!'

Amaum!' mumbled the lieutenant, who, as in duty bound, applauded all that the Mir Alai said; but oh, Allah! only two wives per company!'

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE YUZE BASHI,

LEAVING a small party under Lieutenant Logan, of ours, to protect the landing of the baggage and stores, accompanied by our three Turkish acquaintances, we forded a stream, with pipes playing and bayonets fixed, and crossing the promontory, marched towards Heraclea, which lies at the bottom of a little bay, and on the land side is defended by walls, though somewhat old and rent; and in a short time we marched in, making its streets of old dilapidated and worm-eaten timber houses; its domed mosques, and tall white-painted minars; its ruined palace of Vespasian; its Greek café; its Jewish bazaar; its whirling windmills; its stony and slippery thorough

fares and old ruins of the Grecian days, ring to the sharp rat-tat of the British brass drum and to the skirl of three great Scottish war-pipes, from the chanters and nine deep drones of which our pipers poured the stirring 'Haughs of Cromdale,' with such effect, that the big-breeched, long-bearded, stupid-looking old Turks, who sat smoking on carpets and platforms at the doors and in the street, with yataghans and pistols in their red-shawl girdles; the lively Greeks, in tarboosh, short jacket, and blue inexpressibles; the sharp-visaged Jews and solemn Armenians, all opened their round black eyes, and threw up their hands in wonder, as we wheeled up towards the fortress in sections of threes, with arms sloped, our tartans waving, and black feathers flaunting in the wind.

A fry of little Osmanli gamins, barelegged, though wearing short wide breeches and the red fez with its long tassel, scampered about us, gamboling, uttering shrill cries of wonder, and styling us Janissaries, Arnaouts, Albanians, Giaours, and anything but Britons; and thus escorted, we reached the spacious Coumbazadjilar-Kislaci, or barrack of the Bombardiers, where a battalion of Turkish infantry was under arms to receive us; and with ranks open, presented arms in a manner which would have done no discredit to any other European troops, their drums beating, and the officers saluting with the edge of their Damascus sabres outwards-as it is turned inward to none but the Sultan himself.

The officers of this battalion had done their best to provide us with a handsome collation- -so handsome and luxurious indeed that, after our recent hardship, the very memory of it is enough to make one whistle; and apart from certain peculiarities, we found them very pleasant, quaint, and conversible fellows, though very few of them could boast of education sufficient to entitle them to add the envied appendage of effends

to their names. Their language, like that of the better class of Osmanli, was a mixture of Persian and Turkish, while that of their soldiers, like the jargon of the peasantry and boatmen of the Bosphorus, was Turkish alone: but in this these Orientals resemble ourselves; for in Britain the language of the educated people is alike distinct from the Scottish tongue and the dialects of the old Saxon.

Mac Innon, here is to our noble selves!' said Catanagh, in Gaelic. How do you like the Roumelian wine?'

'It seems thin and poor."

• Dioul! but it is more pleasant for you to be drinking it here, than be imbibing sherry-cobblers and cocktail among the Yankees.'

'True,' said I with a sigh, as I thought of the evicted men of Glen Ora.

At this entertainment, the sulky old Yuze Bashi, warmed by the forbidden juice of the grape (of which being animated by our example he partook rather freely, notwithstanding the anathemas of him whose sabre cleft the moon in twain-Mohammed 'the Holy Camel Driver'), seemed to conceive a sudden favour for me, and in his strange jargon of French and Arabic, with a few hiccups between, gave me an account of himself and of the Sultan's service.

He was named, it would appear, Hadjee Hussein Ebn al Ajuz (or the son of the old woman), as his mother had been a cast-off slave of Mehemet Ali, the Viceroy of Egypt; and his paternal parent was supposed to be a certain enterprising corporal of Mamelukes, who died with a bowstring about his neck for borrowing the silver lamps of a mosque at Suez. Little Hussein became a soldier, and fought at the battles of Koniah and Homs, in the war against Mehemet Ali; and in these affairs had cut off various heads, and stowed away innumerable Egyptian ears in the mysterious depths of his red Oriental breeches,

all to his own great satisfaction and contentment— as a head was worth a piastre, and a pair of ears sold before Reschid Pasha's tent for ten paras.

At the rout of Koniah he had saved the only pair of Turkish colours which escaped the furious advance of the Egyptian infantry-viz., those of Scherif Bey's regiment by stuffing them into his voluminous regimental breeches, wherein various bullets lodged harmlessly thereafter during the retreat; for this and other acts of devotion, he was rewarded by the government of Rodosdchig, a little fortress a few miles from Heraclea; and after making the pilgrimage, partly by steamer, to Mecca; after drinking of the Zemzem well, and of that which flows at Midian where Moussa watered the flocks at Jethro, and rolled from its mouth a stone which the united strength of Jethro's seven shepherds failed to move; after kissing the holy Kaaba, and flinging a few stones at an imaginary devil, he returned in a mingled state of beer and beatitude to his fortress. There, since 1842, he had spread his carpet, reposed in the lap of a charming odalisque, and smoked his chibouque in contentment and peace; and there— nathless his being a Hadjeè, and the builder of a little gilt mosque he drank and swore like any enlightened Christian of the western world.

Fat, cunning as Lucifer, sensual as a sybarite, and intensely illiberal, he was a fair specimen of the old Turk of the worst kind; and if the curve be the line of beauty, then the shins of Hussein, like those of most Osmanlies, were perfection. His ears were set high on his head; his forehead was low and narrow; his eyebrows nearly met, and thus betokened a cruel and revengeful nature. He gave me, however, a little insight into the economy of military life in the sultan's service.

Our regiments,' said he, all consist of four battalions, and each battalion is commanded by a cole

agassi (major), and has one standard. A colonel or lieutenant-colonel commands the whole, with one great standard-the banner of the prophet-upon whose name be glory! Each battalion has its squad of slaves, who carry water on the march and bear the wounded from the field of battle. So strict is the etiquette maintained in our service by officers, that they never dine with subordinates in rank; hence the jovial messes of Frangistan excite only our wonder; and to see a great Mir Alai, who commands four thousand bayonets, drinking wine with a poor little devil of an ensign, would astound the whole Turkish army. Even in the street a superior officer always walks half a pace before an inferior; thus I have seen five officers all walking along a street at once in echelon, and maintaining a conversation at the same time. None among us wear beards under the rank of general-with a few exceptions. A junior officer always rises and salutes a senior on the latter entering a room, and cannot seat himself again without his permission, or appear before him without his fez, belt, and sabre. Our Turkish privates receive about four shillings Ingleez per month; but our lord the Sultan provides for their food and clothing over and above their pay.'

I thanked the old fellow for this information, which did not impress me highly with the position of an officer under his Majesty Abdul-Medjid; and after a time Jack Belton and I, tired of the entertainment, and of hearing lamentations for the fall of Kars, and description of a palace of silver-solid silverwhich the Sultan was to build in London when he visited the Queen of the Ingleez; so, carefully loading our revolvers, and placing them in our belts, we took our regimental swords and dirks, and set forth for a ramble in the dusk, regardless of the warnings of Catanagh and the Mir Alai Said, who told us that strangers were never safe from assassination and rob