Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 22.djvu/76

66 one Aboo Arish, a subaltern officer, whose stern command and intrepid bearing bad often retrieved the fortune of a doubtful battle; and after the close of the war it occurred to him to utilize the stentorian talent of his lieutenant in a different way. He made him the coadjutor of his envoy to the neighboring chieftains, and had no cause to regret his appointment, for, even on occasions that would have foiled the strategy of a European diplomat, the mere presence of Aboo Arish never failed to overawe the council of a hostile tribe.

This power of a physiognomic majesty is well illustrated by another story from the Caucasus, which I find in Lermontoff's history of the eventful campaign that ended with the capture of the prophet-chieftain, Shamyl ben Haddin, on the plateau of Ghunib, September 10, 1859. Eighteen hundred against twenty-six thousand, his men had defended themselves from early morning till after noon, and, when his ammunition was exhausted, began to hurl rocks and cannon from the parapets. But toward evening the citadel was taken by storm, and the survivors of the garrison were led forth, torn and bleeding, but resolved to die game. The officers of the Russian headquarters had adjourned for supper, as soon as the bloody work was done, but, when the commanding officer was notified that the great chieftain was among the prisoners, he gave orders to conduct him at once into his presence. A noise of boisterous mirth greeted the arrival of Shamyl when his escort halted before the commander's tent, but when he stood in the presence of his captors, like Ormuz before the court of Ahriman, a deep silence came over the assembly, and the insolent Junkers of Baryatinski's staff involuntarily rose to their feet, as if they felt the presence of a superior being!

"When he contracted his eyebrows, his look could assume a penetrative force that I have never seen equaled," says Lermontoff. Marius and Robert Burns had such eyes, and also Vasco de Gama, él de los ojos terribles, who "could read a face like an open book," and once quelled the spokesmen of a mutinous crew by simply keeping them under the fire of that terrible gaze.

How men can be affected by excessive ugliness history illustrates by many amusing examples. We have already referred to the nose of the first Hapsburger, which came so near defeating his nomination; but, if the descriptions of Caliph Walid's face are authentic, he was lucky that his accession to the throne of the Prophet did not depend upon the votes of men with physiognomic prejudices. His nose was crooked and sharp like a reaping-hook, his cheeks so tumid that "they could be seen from behind"; his mouth was atrocious, and, to put a finishing touch to the portrait, Abulfeda informs us that he was marked by the small-pox as man was never marked before, "pits like auger-holes" distributed over his face from ear to ear.

"Non cuique datum est habere nasum; another Eastern potentate, Ghengis Khan, had no nose to speak of, and was otherwise so