on the steps of a fountain, tired, hot, and
hungry, I sit, to munch some baked chesnuts I
have just bought of a street merchant, who
exclaimed " Allah is merciful," when I gave him
exactly one farthing more than he asked: a
generosity for which one or two Circassian boys,
roving near, in search of melon rinds and other
alimentary trifles, made faces at me behind my back,
strongly expressive of a doubt of my sanity, for
which insult I " heaped coals of fire upon their
head" by instantly treating them to a penny-worth
(such a turban full) of green and bullety
wild peaches, just then providentially offered me
for sale.

I sat down, repeating to myself that beautiful
short prayer, which forms the first chapter of
Mahomet's Koran (more for its poetry than its
religion), and thinking, if I dared to go now into
the next street and shout out in Turkish, my
private opinion, that " the Koran is a foolish, dull,
long-winded, crafty, incoherent book, with
nearly all that is good in it stolen from the
Bible," how I should feel going home to
Misseri's hotel carrying my head in my black
leather carpet-btig!

I was seated under the broad brim of the
roof of a fountain which, as usual in Mosque
court-yards, filled the centre of the "quad."
Twenty years ago, and I suppose the slice of a
reaping-hook sabre would have been the first
intimation that I should have had that I was in
the sacred court of ablutions, and breaking the
law of the Prophet. But things grow changed in
twenty years; no one disturbed me now; and
if there was just a spice of danger in the situation
(for among Turks, when they are really fanatic,
you are never safe), it gave a spice of pleasure to
the situation, such as one feels in sitting on a
sea-cliff, and hanging one's legs over among the
fringing flowers, so that one may look France-ward,
which is sea-ward, with more ease.

I was looking out between the slim Aaron's
rod pillars, at the mosque pigeons that were
flickering their emerald necks in the sun, thinking
of I know not what—perhaps, if of anything,
of a dead nation's dead faith—when I
accidentally looked round and found that a Circassian
—one of the great band of exiles that filled
Constantinople—had, unobserved by me,
entered the court-yard, and seated himself near.
Perhaps he came from prayer at the mosque;
perhaps merely to rest from the sun. Be
that as it will, there he was: a fair type of
his race in face, dress, and bearing: a huge,
round, high cap, muffy and ridiculous as
an English grenadier's, crowned his head. He
wore loose red trousers, and a collarless
loose-sleeved robe, open down the middle, showing a
loose-belted blue tunic reaching to the knees.
His shoes were sloppy and Eastern, and one of
his feet rested on a square, thick-legged, low
stool which lay on the ground—left there by the
priest when he quitted his chibouk and coffee-cup
to mount the minaret, twenty minutes ago, at
noon, and call the true believers to prayer.
At his belt, lying across his stomach, ready for the
hand, hung a broad heavy hanjar, not unlike the
Roman sword, some two feet and a half long
only, but heavy enough to cleave a bear's skull
—or a Russian's— in two at a stroke, and with
a point needle sharp. On either breast of his
brown outer tunic were sewn, or hooked on,
six red-plugged yellow tubes, which at first I not
unnaturally mistook for the Pan-pipes of some
wandering musician, whose business it was to
amuse the Turkish coffee drinkers. I had forgotten
that the Lesghians and the Daghestan followers
of Schamyl never moved without arms, and that
these tubes (which even the children wear)
contained fire food for the matchlock, now shut up
in some Turkish guard-house. Checknian or
Lesghian I knew not, yet I guessed him a
tormentor of the plains of Georgia, a terror to
grey-coated Russian soldiers shut up in mountain
forts, a beheader of Muscovite spies, and
a fierce chanter among the foraging horsemen
of Vedenno of Koran battle-songs. Had
I known any scraps of Georgian, or more than
half a dozen sentences of Russian, I would
have drawn my Tartar mountaineer into
conversation about his chieftain; but, as I knew he
could not understand English or Turkish, I
contented myself with offering the sullen warrior,
the terror of the Orbelianis and the Ahlahzans of
Georgia, a handful of chesnuts, which he
accepted in a lordly and patronising manner, and,
without speaking, turned round towards me as
sociable men do when preparing for conversation.

So I sat there, admiring the rough warrior,
whose keen shaska had lopped off Russky heads
like radishes, and observing the shrewd,
half-closed eyes, the wide prominent Tartar
cheek-bones, the sweeping mustachios, and stubbly grey
beard. There was something so original to me in
his black curled wool cap so tall and large, in
his blue Oriental tunic, in his rude shoes, in
his thin pink trousers, and in his brown rough
robe, with the woolly lining turned back over
his sinewy and veined hands, that I felt myself
obliged to invent some excuse for further looking
at him without rudeness. I knew, from
experience, that with Turk, Persian, Armenian,
Greek, or Circassian, there is one subject on
which they are never tired of talking, and
that is, the temper and value of their arms,
whether the weapon be matchlock, sword,
javelin, or dagger; so, putting an enormous
degree of good temper, sociability, and sagacity
into my voice, I first said, in a solemn,
sympathising voice, expressive of deep sorrow for a
broken nation:

"Schamyl!" And then shook my head, as
Lord Burleigh is once said to have done.

The mountaineer, looking fierce and roused,
muttered something in his language, which I
could not follow, and therefore did not.

I followed up my first success by growling,
in a savage tone, between my clenched teeth,
to express my national antipathies, and win his
confidence:

"Russky, bad."

Upon this the Tchirgee's eyes brightened, and
he touched his dagger.