holds his audiences in a little chamber close to the gate (living at a garden-house out of the city); he may be said to "sit in the gate." He was young, plain, sickly-looking, but still he had the air and manner of a gentleman, a very rare thing with these Turks. There was very little ceremony; but, in the group, which nearly filled the chamber, there were two or three persons of age and rank, whose silent and grave intentness of regard towards the young pasha struck me as something to be remembered. His interpreter, who spoke in Turkish to him, and in Arabic to our youth, Mohammed, had one of those noble-looking faces which át once attract, and his style and manner of interpretation had a somewhat of respectful anxiety in it when he addressed the pasha, and of dignity when he looked round upon our youthful, and on this occasion rather alarmed, dragoman, that made a good scene to look upon, though nothing to describe. We sipped coffee, the pasha smoking from a very long pipe, the bowl of which rested on a silver receiver. Nothing that is said at any of these kind of common visits is worth repeating or remembering; a man who has made one, has the fulness of experience. The indecent manner in which, on leaving the pasha's, his attendants pressed round us for bucksheesh, far exceeded any thing we had seen of the kind before, or did after, while in Egypt. We saw near the wall two fine white or grey mules for the saddle; and soon after the pasha passed us in the town riding one, and made us, in return for ours, a most courteous salaam. Our fine-faced dragoman turned out to be a most troublesome, forward man, full of mean tricks. He told us the pasha had commissioned him to entertain us; he got us into his mean little residence, produced, in about two hours, a miserable dish of something not eatable, and robbed us of time, air, and enjoyment. An hour after this meal came four of the pasha's horses ; this certainly was pleasant; these animals were large, high-maned, broad-breasted creatures, without a sound hoof among them, and so fat, that moving beyond the true Asiatic procession-pace was out of the K question. I selected one, which really would have been invaluable as a performer in Timour the Tartar. He was white, with a saddle of crimson-velvet, embroidered, and had the large shovel Mamaluke stirrup ; and he ambled, and tossed his head and ́mane, in a manner quite flattering to me. Had I been a pasha with three tails, he could not have borne me more proudly.. The dragoman, mounted on a fine ass, led the way, and we rode through the principal streets and bazaars, and out to a miserable garden, shut in by lofty walls, and not worth going to see. The caves excavated in the side of the mountain to the west of this city we had not time to visit; we only pulled for a few minutes, and gazed on them at a distance. up It was from one of the apertures in the rock before us that the emaciated face of John of Lycopolis* looked forth upon the embassy of Theodosius, and counselled and blessed that war, in which a youthful, long * The ancient name of Siout. in arms, haired Goth made his first essay who, in a few years, bathed and banquetted as a victor in Athens, and leaned on his sword before the walls of Rome, lord of the wealth, and arbiter of the lives of twelve hundred thousand Romans! On our return to the city we adjourned to the French doctor's, and partook of a quiet little dinner. There was a sallow, melancholy-looking man at table, one of Ali Pasha's brigade instructors; he had been twenty years or more in Persia, in a like situation, and having made several thousand dollars, in fact, what he considered a fortune, was returning to his native country, when he was robbed of all in the desert. The doctor, too, had a disappointed look, and every now and then pushed up the turban from his hot brow, as if he longed to be fairly rid of his servitude and disguise. Just before we were going away, he casually mentioned that he had been a prisoner with us, and had been taken in the sanguinary affair of Albuera, a red field, I remember; but he added, what I could not so well understand, that he had afterwards been attached for nearly two years to the head-quarters of our army, and moved with it. Before we left Siout we called on the Coptic bishop; he was an aged man, of a sick and worn appearance, and sat in a darkened apartment, enveloped in his mantle. He seemed surprised, but evidently, as far as the indolence of age and ill health permitted the expression of it, gratified at our visit, which I conveyed to him, through the interpreter, was one of simple respect. His house and room were far more comfortable and decent than we had been led to expect. Here, when the coffee-bearer presents the cup, he makes a bow and bend as if to kiss your hand, it is not ungraceful; mere nothings these, but yet they please the wanderer. We now returned to our boat, the Smyrniote dragoman and a silver stick of the pasha's accompanying us. We found that the pasha had sent us sheep, fowls, bread, loaf-sugar, and, in fact, a very large supply we gave the full value of them in gold, to the two personages above mentioned, who, we all suspected, from what the French doctor told us, forced : |