CHAPTER XVII.

His

The heights. A canvass village. A mountain sea. A sneezing soldiery. A quagmire. A bullock-cart constructed on commissariat principles. Famished men. An elderly general officer. importance. Needless bustle. His rheumatism. A puzzled spectator. Military music. An episode of the war. A picture.

FANCY a canvass village, with a confusion of little peaked huts. Fancy a huge swelling sea, with mountains for waves. Fancy the troops of many nations, mustering wearily. Here a parade, with a dingy and muffled officer shouting the word of command through a cold, spasmodically, and then sneezing a sort of involuntary amen. Fancy muddy men getting muddy water from a muddy well, and wading through a quagmire to do so.

Yonder, past a dismal little clump of stunted brushwood, goes a bullock-cart, groaning and creaking, up to the axles in squash. It is preceded by an unearthly-looking old person, who appears to be made of mud, and who looks more gaunt, and famished, and hopeless, than other people here. Before him, again, ride two mounted guards, probably to prevent his running away, seeing that he is a native, and his waggon carries that on which the lives of many brave men depend. After the cart toil other men, a-foot, and lagging to pick up anything which drops. And things do drop, more frequently than the admirers of our very curious commissariat arrangements would wish to have chronicled. No species of vehicle, however, could be, perhaps, more completely unfitted for its purpose than that in question. It seems to have been constructed with a special view, very usual in these countries; it is that of applying the largest possible amount of labour with the smallest utility. It is a wickerwork conveniency, crazy and dirty to a degree which bankrupts description. It is uncovered, and so exposed to wind and weather. In size it is not bigger, and it certainly is not so strong, as a child's cot. It is propped up, however, in various ways, with rough-hewn bits of wood, which it re

quires the attention of one man to keep constantly in their places. Then the load is piled up with great slovenliness and contempt of order, according to the tenets of the commissariat. Nevertheless, I perceive a group of four or five blue-nosed cavalry soldiers, who regard it with anxious eyes, hungrily, as it crawls on.

Wide, wide away rides a general officer and his staff. I do not know why I smile as my eye rests upon them; but perhaps it is, that the general officer is a very feeble and elderly general officer, who appears to be rather shaky, so to speak. His poor elderly head is stretched forward and bent down, as if some other part of his person was suffering from acute pain. He carries his legs stiffly, and he appears to totter on his horse, though he has got a well-bitted pacer, and a clever easy goer. Then there appears to me an odd sort of importance in the group, as if they were riding nowhere particularly, but wished to do it handsomely, and in such wise as to create a sensation. Some tired soldiers, lying on their elbows on the ground, watch the elderly general officer with vacant looks, as if they had a dim idea that there was something not quite right in soldiering affairs-a muddle, indeed, but further knew nothing.

Stay, here comes a breeze nearer, nearer, and the sound of the French bugles and the silver fife, speaking out, is heard in a second; then the breeze falls, and it dies away. Then, once more, it peals martially on the ear, and an orderly has checked his horse, and turns half-round to listen, with bright eyes and reddening cheek. Then he rides on, and I think he sits his horse more jauntily than before; so I wish that there were more music about, and something of the pomp and gaiety of camps, to cheer men's hearts, through all this mud and dreariness.

In the distance, I see dismounted horsemen, plodding on foot humanely, and horses riderless, yet with drooping crest.

There, stuck in the mire, is part of a broken wheel, and near it is an old burst gun-barrel, rusting fast into nothingness. They are, perhaps, the only remaining evidence of how much valour dared for glory, in some forgotten episode of a by-gone struggle. Who shall tell me now, how proud a heart may have quailed at the bursting of that gun-how

brave a man may have bowed or fled, when his trust in his weapon had failed him!

Far, far away-deep into the country, and standing out against the blue sea-calm, at last, to-day, is fair Sebastopol, with its towers, and forts, and mighty battlements; between may be seen the peering masts of a man-of-war, which indicate the position of the inland bay of Balaklava.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The Turkish soldier. Modest apology of the author for naked truths. Effects of a long course of bastinado. Pride, fear, obstinacy, and clumsiness of Turkish soldiers. Muffi Effendi, his coffee-boy. A Turkish contract. Eastern worthies. An Athenian. Scruffi Effendi. The author, overcome by his feelings, suddenly breaks out into a raphsody.

He is a gross, stolid, smoking, brutal, untaught fellow, in ill-made no-coloured clothes. It is harsh language this, and I am sorry to use it; but there are few classes of men, perhaps, more completely degraded than that to which he belongs. Bastinadoes and wanton bloodshed have at last wrought their cruel work upon him, and the Turkish soldier is scarcely a single grade removed from the beasts of the field. He has the same unreasoning instincts, and very much the same feelings.

He has a stupid animal pride about him; a dogged obstinacy sometimes, a craven fear at others. He is clumsy, awkward, ferocious, greedy, dirty. He is an automaton before the powerful, a savage before the weak.

His arms are old and rusty, and dangerous chiefly to himself. They were bought, with a cargo or two more, of a French merchant, who had bought them originally from the mad chiefs of some revolutionary party whose conspiracy came to nothing, and who had of course been cheated by the disreputable manufacturer who made them. The Turkish Government bought them by a contract, which was in the first instance given to Muffi Effendi's coffee-boy, and by him

sold to a Jew squatter in the bazaars, who had much to do with the Franks. A touter to one of the Perote hotels got scent of the contract while in the Jew's hands, and there was some sharp running between him and the head boatman of the consul of the king of the Towering taxes. The touter, a half-civilised Armenian, would have been beaten hollow by the Greek if he had not bethought him of a worthless old Frenchman, who prowled about the back stairs of the great pashas' houses, and was on confidential terms with the porters of several of the embassies, and who thus became a sort of smeller out of good things for some of the Galata gentry. So the end of it was, that the boatman, the touter, the Jew squatter, the worthless old Frenchman, and the dragoman of one of the embassies, all agreed to share the spoil, and offer the contract to the French merchant above mentioned, and this is how the Turkish soldier came by his arms, and how many generations of Turkish soldiers have come by their arms, and how it thus chanced, that in the day of danger they laid that proverb to heart, which assured them that an individual who prefers flight to fighting in presence of an awkward enemy, may live to indemnify himself under more favourable circumstances; whereas, if he stays to do battle (especially with worthless arms), there is no manner by which a reflective person could be induced to answer for his ultimate security.

The Turkish soldier's clothes were also the subject of another contract given to the step-father of the first cousin of a dragoman's wife, as a bribe to induce that remote individual to use his family influence to persuade the dragoman to obtain the interference of Sir Hector Stubble, in the case of a connection of the grand vizier's third wife, which fortunate connection had been indulging himself by a little quiet murder and robbery in Epirus.

The first holder of the contract sold it readily to a travelling Copt, who took it to Egypt, and was immediately followed by a shrewd little Wallachian, who caught, and outbid the agent of Messrs. Spinner, Woolley, & Co., who not perceiving clearly all that might be made of it in judicious. hands, let it go easily. At this stage it was winded by a Greek banker, who swept suddenly down on the little

Wallachian and threatened to sell him up, but was bought off with the contract readily. The affairs of the Greek banker himself, however, were in a bad way, and he thought just then that a good deal might be done in corn, so he offered it to an Armenian jeweller at a small advance on the cost price. The Armenian jeweller could not conclude till he had negotiated with a young Greek renegade in his debt, to use the necessary efforts with his uncle, the Defterdar of a Muschir, to secure the payment of the sum contracted for within three years after the delivery of the goods, the young Greek and his uncle receiving a commission of twenty-two per cent. on each instalment. To make assurance doubly sure also, an Athenian Greek, who had just expended the produce of an adroit robbery at good interest in the purchase of a passport as a British subject, was easily persuaded to be of the party by a promise of ten per cent. more on all sums which should be recovered from the Turkish government, through the demand of the British embassy. This matter being finally arranged, the Armenian addressed himself to a Jew, who had recently purchased a large quantity of damaged cloth saved from a wreck, and sold to him by the Levantine cancelier of a mighty young vice-consul, who was also Lloyd's agent at an out-of-the-way port in Asia, where he had been sent because his maternal grandmother (bless the women, how they get their favourites on in life) had been nursery-governess to Miss Trotter, of the West Riding, and Threadneedle-street; who married the great courtier, Sir Palaver Tweedledum.

And this is how the Turkish soldier came by his clothes, and how many generations of Turkish soldiers have come by their clothes, how consequently it happens that the Turkish soldier always looks so very oddly dressed.

Shall I tell you the story now of the Turkish soldier's buttons, given by the Armenian jeweller as a separate good thing to the worthless old Frenchman (mentioned in the improving tale of the Turkish soldier's arms) who, poking his nose into everything, had found out that the Armenian jeweller was in the habit of putting false jewels into the sabres of honour given by the sultan to his chief officers, and who threatened to betray him (through a dragomanic friend),