Twelve Months with the Bashi-Bazouks by Edward Money

Author:Edward Money
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2017-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER X. — THE JOURNEY AND ITS INCIDENTS.

ON the second of November I started en route for Monastir. My party consisted of Mr. M—, brother of the accountant of the Land Transport Corps, at the Dardanelles; Mahomet; my English servant (a boy about seventeen years old); my syce or groom; and a servant in the same capacity belonging to Mr. M

I had my three chargers and two baggage-ponies; these with the horses brought by Mr. M—, Mahomet’s charger, my servant’s horse, and one or two other spare steeds, made up a number of sixteen or twenty horses in all. I had heard on good authority that the road was much infested with robbers, so we determined, as a general rule, to keep with our baggage beasts.

I knew little or nothing of the manner of travelling in Turkey at that time, and I felt, therefore, at starting all the feeling of novelty and expectation usual in such cases; but it was more than ignorance of the interior of the country, which I was about to traverse, which made me spring out of my rickety camp-bed, on the morning of departure, with a light and expectant heart. I knew I was departing on a responsible mission, one which, if I executed it well, would advance me as an officer in the force; would also give me the good opinion of the General commanding; would probably, in the next year’s campaign, place me in a still more responsible and independent position; besides this, I should now have an opportunity of trying my own theory of treatment with the Bashi-Bazouks; of seeing if soldiers could really be made of them; of fashioning them after my own fancy,—all these hopes, these expectations, this vanity, if you will, made me as light-hearted when I set out on that morning as ever I have felt in my life.

We were a queer-looking set as we wound down some of the low hills bordering the straits on the Asiatic side. I had on one of the Indian “solar topees,” or felt hats; below, a rough cotton-padded red shooting-coat, whity-brown breeches, and high jack-boots, completed my attire. My friend Mr. M—was dressed in some equally singular style. My English boy had encased his head with a huge and gaudy Arab scarf, the ends of which streaming out a yard at least behind him, as he occasionally galloped on, made him look very un-English, though I really cannot say what he resembled. Mahomet, in honour of our first day’s journey, having put on his best and gold-braided clothes, shone in the early sunshine like any ephemeral butterfly, while the syces, in any dress you will, or no dress at all (for that was really the case with one of them), perched on the first of the string of baggage-ponies (the remainder being tied one behind another), looked very much from their extreme hideousness as if put there to set off in stronger colours, by contrast, the beauty of the scenery around.

Though

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