Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/121

 shoot with bows; here are a singular kind of wrestlers naked, except that they wear oiled-leather breeches, that no one may be easily able to grasp and hold them; here they give challenges for wrestling-matches, and wrestle together, and amuse any one who offers them a few aspers.

Here, too, we saw Turkish religious feeling. A Christian, a poor Greek, brought to the place a number of thistle-finches in a cage, and a Turk went up to him and bought them; next, taking out one, he looked strangely up and down around him, and muttered something, and then, placing the bird on the palm of his hand, cried out, Allaha, and let it go; and thus he did with the rest also, having no other thought than that he was doing great honour to God and Mahomet, and might expect a certain recompence for freeing the birds from confinement. I also saw green birds there so cleverly trained that they are lured from a great distance, and if anybody holds up his hand, they fly on it, and if he has an asper in his hand, the bird takes it with his beak and carries it to his master, who gives it in return a grain or seed, and puts it back again into the cage; he repeats the same process with each bird, letting them out one after the other. One Turk had, at least, fifteen of these birds, to which we gave away and wasted a good many aspers. Hence it is manifest that in Turkey, as well as with us, knaves cheat the people out of their money by idle tricks. In this open space, as long as peace lasted between our Emperor and the Sultan, every Friday, which the Turks hallow as a Sunday, provided it was fine weather, there met about 800 or 900 young men, Turks belonging to the court,