Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/71

Rh escort us on shore. On landing, we were received under the hospitable roof of my predecessor, Mr. Werry, who had been promoted, on my appointment, to Benghazi, and who was anxiously waiting my arrival in order to be relieved from his old post. I got up very early the next morning to take a look at my new home, which the darkness had entirely hidden the night before. Before I had gone many yards I met a Greek funeral. On the bier was laid out a young girl about fourteen years old, the face exposed, the head encircled by a chaplet of fresh flowers, after the manner of the ancients. If I had been in the mood to care about omens, here was one such as in antiquity might have detained a traveller ready girt for a journey, or a ship with a fair wind.

After breakfasting with our host, I arrayed myself in a magnificent new uniform, too much paadded for the climate of the Levant, and proceeded with Mr. Werry to pay visits of ceremony to the Pasha, the Vice-Consuls, my future colleagues, and other magnates of the place.

The Pasha was a gentleman about fifty years of age, with an aristocratic aquiline nose, a restless wary eye, and a sinister mouth, weak, but cunning. He is excessively rich, and has an advantage which Turkish officials can seldom boast of; he can trace his descent to a grandfather. His family name is Kulaksiz, or "the Earless;" some ancestor having, it is to be presumed, been deprived of those members by an angry Padischah. His father was Pasha of Mytileue during the Greek revolution, and