Page:Eothen, or, Traces of travel brought home from the East by Kinglake, Alexander William.djvu/28

12 and silver, and brass, and steel, is not at all fitted for moving on foot; it cannot even walk without ludicrously deranging its architectural proportions, and as to running, I once saw our Tatar make an attempt at that laborious exercise, in order to pick up a partridge which Methley had winged with a pistol-shot, and really the attempt was one of the funniest misdirections of human energy that I ever beheld. It used to be said, that a good man, struggling with adversity, was a spectacle worthy of the gods:—a Tatar attempting to run would have been a sight worthy of you. But put him in his stirrups, and then is the Tatar himself again: there you see him at his ease, reposing in the tranquillity of that true home (the home of his ancestors), which the saddle seems to afford him, and drawing from his pipe the calm pleasures of his "own fireside," or else dashing sudden over the earth, as though for a moment he were borne by the steed of a Turkman chief, with the plains of central Asia before him. It was not till his subordinates had nearly completed their preparations for their march that our Tatar, "commanding the forces," arrived; he came sleek, and fresh from the bath (for so is the custom of the Ottomans when they start upon a journey), and was carefully accoutred at every point. From his thigh to his throat he was loaded with arms and other implements of a campaigning life. There is no scarcity of water along the whole road, from Belgrade to Stamboul, but the habits of our Tatar were formed by his ancestors, and not by himself, so he took good care to see that his leather water-flask was amply charged and properly strapped to the saddle, along with his blessed tchibouque. And now at last, he has cursed the Suridgees, in all proper figures of speech, and is ready for a ride of a thousand miles, but before he comforts his soul in the marble baths of Stamboul, he will be another and a smaller man—his sense of responsibility, his too strict abstemiousness, and his restless energy, disdainful of sleep, will have worn him down to a fraction of the sleek Moostapha, that now leads out our party from the gates of Belgrade.

The Suridgees are the fellows employed to lead the baggage horses. They are most of them Gipsies. Poor devils! their is an unhappy one—they are the last of the human race, and