Page:Busbecq, Travels into Turkey (1744).pdf/36

 they will not scruple to give some Aspers. And the Truth is, these kind of Flowers, though they were presented to me as a Gift, yet they cost me a great deal of Money; for some Aspers were always expelled in requital. Neither is there any other way of treating with a Turk, but by opening the Purse-*strings, as soon as any Christian comes among them; neither must he think to shut them again, till he go out of their Country: While he is there, he must scatter his Coin, and if he get no other Advantage by it, yet it makes them more tractable. For the Turks are so ill-natured, and such under-*valuers of all Nations but their own, that without this Open-handedness, there were no more living among them, for Strangers, than in the most desolate and uninhabited Places, by reason of the excessiveness either of Cold or Heat; but with the Bait of Liberality, you may catch a Turk at any Time.

the mid-way between Hadrianople and Constantinople, there is a little Town, called Chiurli, memorable for the Overthrow which Selimus received in a Battle against his Father Bajazet, out of which he escaped by the Swiftness of his Horse, called Carabonluch, i. e. a Black Cloud, and so fled to the Cham, or the Precopeian Tartar, who was his Father-in-Law.

we came to Selimbria, which is a Town standing on the Sea-side in our Way, we saw the Ruins of an old Wall and Ditch, which were made by the later Emperors of Greece, which reached from that Sea to the Danow, to secure all that was contained within that Fortification to the Constantinopolitans, against the Incursions of the Barbarians; and there goes a Story, that when that Wall was a Building, a certain old Man delivered his Opinion to his Wife, viz. That that