Page:Eothen, or, Traces of travel brought home from the East by Kinglake, Alexander William.djvu/20

4 shiningly with the decayed grandeur of the garments to which they were attached (this carefulness of his arms is a point of honor with the Osmanlee, who never allows his bright yataghan to suffer from his own adversity); then the long drooping mustachios, and the ample folds of the once white turbans, that lowered over the piercing eyes, and the haggard features of the men, gave them an air of gloomy pride, and that appearance of trying to be disdainful under difficulties, which I have since seen so often in those of the Ottoman people who live, and remember old times; they seem as if they were thinking that they would have been more usefully, more honorably, and more piously employed in cutting our throats, than in carrying our portmanteaus. The faithful Steel (Methley's Yorkshire servant) stood aghast for a moment, at the sight of his master's luggage upon the shoulders of these warlike porters, and when at last we began to move up, he could scarcely avoid turning round to cast an affectionate look towards Christendom, but quickly again he marched on with the steps of a man, not frightened exactly, but sternly prepared for death, or the Koran, or even for plural wives.

The Moslem quarter of a city is lonely and desolate; you go up and down, and on over shelving and hillocky paths through the narrow lanes walled in by blank, windowless dwellings; you come out upon an open space strewed with the black ruins that some late fire has left; you pass by a mountain of cast-away things, the rubbish of centuries, and on it you see numbers of big, wolf-like dogs lying torpid under the sun, with limbs outstretched to the full, as if they were dead; storks, or cranes, sitting fearless upon the low roofs, look gravely down upon you; the still air that you breathe is loaded with the scent of citron, and pomegranate rinds scorched by the sun, or (as you approach the Bazzar) with the dry, dead perfume of strange spices. You long for some signs of life, and tread the ground more heavily, as though you would wake the sleepers with the heel of your boot; but the foot falls noiseless upon the crumbling soil of an eastern city, and Silence follows you still. Again and again you meet turbans, and faces of men, but they have nothing for you— no welcome-no wonder—no wrath—no scorn