Page:Eothen, or, Traces of travel brought home from the East by Kinglake, Alexander William.djvu/27

]

two or three hours our party was ready; the servants, the Tatars, the mounted Suridgees, and the baggage-horses altogether made up a strong cavalcade. The accomplished Mysseri, of whom you have heard me speak so often, and who served me so faithfully throughout my oriental journeys, acted as our interpreter, and was, in fact, the brain of our corps. The Tatar, you know, is a government courier properly employed in carrying despatches, but also sent with travellers to speed them on their way, and answer with his head for their safety. The man whose head was thus pledged for our precious lives was a glorious looking fellow, with the regular, and handsome cast of countenance, which is now characteristic of the Ottoman race. His features displayed a good deal of serene pride, self-respect, fortitude, a kind of ingenuous sensuality, and something of instinctive wisdom, without any sharpness of intellect. He had been a Janissary (as I afterwards found), and kept up the odd strut of his old corps, which used to affright the Christians in former times;—that rolling gait so comically pompous, that a close imitation of it, even in the broadest farce, would be looked upon as a very rough over-acting of the character. It is occasioned in part by dress and accoutrements. The heavy bundle of weapons carried upon the chest throws back the body so as to give it a wonderful portliness, whilst the immense masses of clothes that swathe his limbs, force the wearer in walking, to swing himself heavily round from left to right, and from right to left—in truth, this great edifice of woollen, and cotton, and silk,