oxen.

appeared a solitary American. I was astonished at the throngs of Turkish women, and to see them moving about at liberty, excepting some of those belonging to the harems of the great, who were seated in gaudy arubas drawn by grey After the crowd had remained for hours in the most exemplary endurance of a hot sun and clouds of dust, the approach of the calvacade was announced by the roar of cannon, and long trains of cavalry and infantry soon appeared, followed by the Seraskier Pasha, the commander-inchief of the army. He was a short and stout personage, with an intelligent face and a silvery beard, the same that now holds the first place in the councils of the new Sultan. After him came a beautiful carriage drawn by four horses, moving in solemn state in the van of the Sultan's bodyguard. The crowd beat eagerly forward to catch a glimpse of the royal person. But he was not there. The interior was occupied only by the likeness of himself; the portrait for which all this stir and ceremony had been created lay carefully upon luxurious cushions and covered with a rich cloth. The procession entered beneath the arch that led to the interior court of the barracks, where the act of presentation was performed. It consisted simply of a prayer offered by an Imaum, at the close of which the multitude responded with a loud Amen.

"I went away from the scene lost in reflection. Here, said I to myself, is a palpable violation of the commands of the Koran, and a gross outrage upon the prejudices of Mussulmans, perpetrated by the acknowledged head of the religion, and the avowed successor of its founder. And it is just such as would most scandalize serious and devout Mohamedans. It is the representation of the human form, which is of all most offensive to them; and even that is not a work of fancy, which would be regarded with greater indulgence, but an actual resemblance of a living person; and to aggravate the insult to religion as much as possible, without commanding adoration, this painted resemblance is con

veyed along the public ways with military pomp and amidst the roar of cannon, consecrated by the sacred forms of religion, and set up before the eyes of all men. Even to the subjects of a Christian prince such an act would appear like an aspiration to divine honours, but to a Mussulman it must seem downright idolatry."*

III. RECRUITING, OR MAN-CATCHING.

In the spring of 1848 we were going from Constantinople to Nicomedia. The deck of the Turkish steamer was filthy, and very much crowded with deck passengers; and as they had just smeared over the cabin with stinking paint, we could not go below at all. The passengers were Turks-military officers and soldiers-who were going into the interior of Asia Minor men-hunting; or, as they expressed it, for levying the conscription and collecting the recruits.

These Nimrods were in all about 160. They were divided into eight gangs; each gang having a captain, a katib or clerk, an imaum to give spiritual comfort, and a hekim or doctor to examine the recruits and to attend to the health of his party. There were also three colonels, who were to fix themselves in the principal towns of the interior, and there see the different gatherings collected and put in order to march for Constantinople. Of the hekims, one was a grey-moustached old Venetian, one was a young Frenchman, and the third a melancholy young Swiss: the other five doctors were Franks from Pera and Galata, who were said to have had no sort of medical education. These last had not even studied in Galata Serai. This man-catching up in Asia was considered very rough work. Such of the students of the Medical

*Tour through Armenia, Persia, &c. New York, 1840. Vol. i. pp. 79-81.

School as followed the profession tried to get better appointments. The Swiss was so melancholy, and the young Frenchman seemed so ashamed at being found on such service or with such a dirty vulgar rabble, that they shunned our advances and would enter into no conversation. The old Venetian, on the contrary, was only too forward and talkative; as he was dressed in Turkish uniform and wore a sword, we needed no one to tell us that he was a renegade. Not having followed his example, the Frenchman and the Swiss had plain clothes and no sword. I have treated in another book of the Venetian's politics, of his republicanism, and of his predictions (which in the course of a few months were pretty well verified), that Charles Albert would go out like the snuff of a candle, and that the Italian liberals would upset Pius IX. He was one of the cunningest and most roguishlooking men I ever met with; even in this country of sinister countenances his struck us at the first glance. He was all over thin and spare; there was nothing of him for disease to catch hold of, and, aged as he was, he was quick, hardy, and alert. Without speaking kindly of his two Frank companions, he spoke most contemptuously of the Perote hekims, saying that it was because government employed such fellows as those that there were so many hunchbacks and miserable objects in the Sultan's army. From his own account of his history before he became a hekim in the East, I saw reason to doubt whether he himself had ever received even the rudiments of a medical education. He had been a common soldier and a common sailor under Bonaparte, and he had been a prisoner of war in England on board the hulks. But whatever skill he might have acquired since, he gave me fully to understand that he had not busied himself with the acquisition of common honesty; and from his own narrative and comments I suspected that he too must have sent a good many miserable objects into the Sultan's army. He had been man-hunting in the interior four or five years successively. He told me that, though not very pleasant, it

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was rather profitable work; and he explained how money was to be made. The son of a Turk that has some property is drawn to serve. Well! the father or mother of the youth secretly slips 200, 300, or mayhap 500 piastres into the palm of the examining hekim bashi, and the hekim testifies that the young man is unfit for the service, having a narrow, weak chest, a flat foot, bad sight, or some other disqualification. If the recruiting officers should, in certain cases, be curious and doubtful, and examine the man drawn or to be drawn, it is so easy, by the application of an unguent, to raise a frightful-looking sore and to declare it to be an incurable ulcer. "These Turks," said the astuto Veneziano, are such born fools, such asses by nature, that a clever fellow may do almost anything with them; not but that we medical officers are often obliged to divide our spoils with the military officers; and frequently the recruiting officers do business on their own account, selling discharges without our knowledge. As for conscription, as practised in Bonaparte's time in France and Italy, it is all a c . a (fudge); it never touches the Turks who have money to spend; the Turks who have no money run away and hide themselves as our parties approach, and we catch some of them as we can, hap-hazard; and if, when they are caught, any of them have parents, or relatives, or friends, that can unpurse (chi possino sborsare), why, then, as a general rule, we let them go and begin to hunt down others." Officers and men (the better sort avoid this service and are apparently never sent on it) were a most slovenly, ragged, frowsy company; some were dressed in uniforms that were greasy and out at elbow, while others, for comfort and convenience, wore the old Turkish costume, only without the turban; none sporting turbans except the imaums. Officers and men were mixed in amicable confusion, laughing, talking, and smoking together. The captains had not only very dusty and ragged coats, but also very dirty shirts. The imaums, as usual, looked cleanly, and their big turbans were of a spotless

white, but they were the only men on board that were uncivil and insolent. One of the colonels, a man apparently not above five-and-forty, was an unwieldy mass of fat and blubber, with an alarmingly short neck and a monstrous abdomen. He had kept on a dirty pair of French boots and a loose pair of black cloth pantaloons, but over these he wore a Turkish silk jacket, padded within, and offering without the delicate, feminine hue of the turquoise: sky-blue is not the word, it was turquoise-blue-a colour of which the Turks are very fond. As we got into warm shelter under the mountains of Asia he lay down in the sun, coiled up under an umbrella, and he slept and snored during the greater part of the voyage. I could not help wondering how this tub of a man was ever to get over the tremendous mountains of the interior; nor could I help doubting whether he would ever get back alive to Stamboul.*

IV.-NAVY.

My old friend Captain Adolphus Slade, R.N., is making a second essay to teach seamanship to the Turks. I cannot believe that he will succeed where Admiral Sir Baldwin Walker failed. I am astonished that he should have ventured a second time on so hopeless and dangerous an experiment. When he cruised with the Capitan Pasha in the Black Sea, in the year 1829, he was every day astonished that the ship was not blown up; so careless were the Turks about their gunpowder. If I remember right, the Lord High Admiral of that date had shortly before been a barber, or a vender of papoushes. The obstinacy of these Capitan Pashas is commensurate with their ignorance. In the course of a few months (1847-8) the Capitan Pasha was changed three times, but the post was never filled by a sailor, or by a man who knew anything of sea affairs.

* Turkey and its Destiny.