[to be continued.]
[TURKEY, "THE SICK MAN."]
BY V. GRIBAYÉDOFF.
It is now forty-three years since Czar Nicholas I., in conversation with the British ambassador at St. Petersburg, referred to Turkey as the "Sick Man," and suggested that Great Britain and Russia deal him his death-blow and divide up his heritage. We all know that Great Britain not only rejected the proposition, but, with France and Turkey as allies, not long after declared war on the Russian Empire. This Crimean war cost the great powers engaged in it thousands and thousands of men and millions and millions of money, and when peace was signed in 1856, Russia found herself deprived of some territory on the Roumanian frontier and of the right to maintain a fleet in the Black Sea.
SOME OF THE "IRREGULARS."
The result acted as medicine on the "Sick Man." Propped up on each side by the western powers, he raised his head and endeavored to feel himself again. He has had several relapses since that period, one notably in 1877-8, when the Russian troops encamped within view of Constantinople. Great Britain again came to his rescue, and prevented some of the amputations planned by the Muscovite—amputations which would surely have led to his demise from sheer loss of blood. For this good service England did a little amputating on her own account, and added to her dominions the fertile island of Cyprus, in the Mediterranean. The "Sick Man" thus obtained another lease of life, but recent events would indicate that his end is at last approaching—as one writer has put it, from sheer inner putrition; and this time there is no sympathizing friend to stretch a helping hand, none to ward off his well-merited fate!
Even those Englishmen who have been most bitterly opposed in the past to a conciliatory policy toward Russia are beginning to recognize the mistake of upholding Turkish rule in Europe. As one English religious journal recently remarked, while advocating the substitution of the Russian for the Turkish flag in Constantinople, "The Czar's rule is bad enough, but there is in the hearts of the Russian people the seed of better things." And it really seems an anomaly that England, of all countries—England, the land of John Howard, of William Wilberforce, of David Livingstone—should have been instrumental in maintaining that pestiferous charnel-house on the banks of the Bosporus! Better a thousand times that the Turkish government should be abolished!
YILDIZ KIOSK, THE SULTAN'S PALACE.
The recent massacres in Armenia and Constantinople are but repetitions of the events of former years. When the Russian troops crossed the Danube in 1853 they found many Bulgarian villages pillaged and their inhabitants massacred by the irregular Turkish troops. The horrible stories that are being told to us daily from Armenia are the same as those told in 1853 from Bulgaria. Towns were burned to ashes, and the inhabitants were burned with them or were killed in attempting to escape from them. Nevertheless, the innate barbarity of the Turk did not prevent the western powers from coming to his help in those days!
In 1861 there were other terrible massacres in the Ottoman Empire, the Christian Maronites of the Lebanon being the victims this time. In the course of a few days five thousand men, women, and children were slaughtered in and around Damascus. This pill was even too much for the Sultan's complacent western friends, and that potentate was obliged to submit to the landing of a French army of intervention in Syria. The many thousands of murders in the Lebanon district were avenged by the execution of about fifty Mussulman ringleaders, after which the French withdrew, with colors flying, to the time of "Partant pour la Syrie."
TURKISH ZOUAVES.
In 1876 the barbarities of the Turks in Bulgaria aroused, as we know, the indignation of the whole civilized world. Here was a brilliant opportunity for putting an end, once and for all, to Mussulman authority over a Christian population, and yet such was the jealousy of the great European powers, one for another, that they could not agree, and at the eleventh hour, as the Russians were about to grasp the prize—Constantinople—a British fleet was sent to the Sea of Marmora, and the Turk was saved once more, as above stated, to perpetrate further atrocities in the name of law and order!
It is a long lane that has no turning, and let us trust, therefore, that the symptoms pointing to the Porte's approaching dissolution are not deceptive. When the end does come it will come with a crash. A glance at the photographs on these pages will convey an idea of the kind of men still at the Sultan's beck and call. They certainly do not look as if they would give up to the Giaour without a struggle. Indeed, if the lessons of history count for anything, the unspeakable Turk will fight tooth and nail to maintain his supremacy. Since the days of Osman, founder of the present dynasty, nay, even as far back as the first century of the Christian era, the ancestors of the modern Turk were redoubtable warriors and conquerors. Even in the present century, although usually unfortunate in the outcome of their wars, they have given evidence of the old fearlessness and disregard for death. The defense of Plevna furnishes a brilliant example of Turkish bravery and obstinacy.
TROOP OF THE SULTAN'S BODY-GUARD.
The pictures here presented have a peculiar interest at this moment. They represent the regiments garrisoned in Constantinople upon whom the Sultan can count in any emergency. These men are well clothed, well fed, and receive their pay with regularity, unlike the troops in the provinces, who have been wretchedly neglected of late years. These crack regiments are the regular imperial guard, line infantry, zouaves, and marines. They are picked men of Turkish race, and are decidedly more respectable than the irregulars shown in another group. It is the latter who, after the Sultan himself, are to be held accountable for the recent horrible massacres. It is they who organized themselves into marauding bands and spread death and devastation among the unhappy Armenians, with the cognizance of the camarilla at the Yildiz Kiosk, or Sultan's palace.
When the final day of reckoning arrives, it is sincerely to be hoped that this gentry will come in for some attention. The civilized world has an old score against them. May it speak in no uncertain tone—in the same voice that thundered ten thousand Turkish assassins to their doom at the sea-fight at Navarino of blessed memory! Those were the days of noble impulses and lofty aspirations, when international jealousies were powerless to sway the councils of nations and stifle the cry of the oppressed. Those were the days of Canning and of Byron. Would that some such men were alive to-day to teach Europe her sacred duty.
[THE VOYAGE OF THE "RATTLETRAP."]
BY HAYDEN CARRUTH.
X.
After we got back to the Rattletrap we promised ourselves plenty of sport the next day watching the freighters with their long teams and wagon trains. Jack could not recover from his first glimpse of Henderson.
"Rather a neat little turnout to take a young lady out driving with," he said, after we had gone to bed. "Twenty-two oxen and four wagons. Plenty of room. Take along her father and mother. And the rest of the family. And her school-mates. And the whole town. Good team to go after the doctor with if somebody was sick—mile and a half an hour. That trotting-cow man at Yankton ought to come up here and show Henderson a little speed. Still, I dare say Henderson could best Old Browny, on a good day for sleeping, and when he didn't have Blacky to pull him along."
But we got small sight of the trail the next day, as the rain we had left behind came upon us again in greater force than ever. It began toward morning, and when we looked out, just as it was becoming light, we found it coming down in sheets—"cold, wet sheets," as Ollie said, too.
We could watch the road from the front of the wagon, and saw a number of freighters go by, usually with empty wagons, as it soon became too muddy for those with loads. We saw one fourteen-ox team with four wagons, and another man with twelve oxen and three wagons. There were also a number of mule teams, and we noticed one of twelve mules and five wagons, and several of ten mules and three or four wagons. With these the driver always rode the nigh-wheel animal—that is, the left-hand rear one.
"I'm going to put a saddle on Old Blacky and ride him after this," said Jack. "Bound to be in the fashion. Wonder how Henderson is getting along in the mud? A mile in two hours, I suppose. Must be impossible for him to see the head oxen through this rain."
The downpour never stopped all day. We tried letter-writing, but it was too cold to hold the pen; and Jack's efforts at playing the banjo proved equally unsuccessful. We fell back on reading, but even this did not seem to be very satisfactory. So we finally settled down to watching the rain and listening to the wind.
When evening came we shut down the front of the cover and tried to warm up the cabin a little by leaving the oil-stove burning, but it didn't seem to make much difference. So we soon went to bed, rather damp, somewhat cold, and a little dispirited. I think we all staid awake for a long time listening to the beating of the rain on the cover, and wondering about the weather of the morrow.
When we awoke in the morning it did not take long to find out about the weather. The rain had ceased and the sky was clear, but it was colder. Outside we found ice on the little pools of water in the footprints of the horses. We were stiff and cold. Some of us may have thought of the comforts of home, but none of us said anything about them.
"This is what I like," said Jack. "Don't feel I'm living unless I find my shoes frozen in the morning. Like to break the ice when I go to wash my face and hands, and to have my hair freeze before I can comb it."
But we observed that he kept as close to the camp-fire which we started as any of us. We went up to Smith's to look after the horses. While Jack and I were at the sheds Ollie staid in the road watching the freight teams. A big swarthy man, over six feet in height, came along, and after looking over the fence at Smith's house some time, said to Ollie,
"Do you s'pose Smith's at home?"
"Oh, I guess so," answered Ollie.
"I'd like to see him," went on the man, with an uneasy air.
"Probably you'll find him eating breakfast," said Ollie.
"I don't like to go in," said the man.
"Why not?"
"I'M AFRAID OF THE DOG."
"I'm—I'm afraid of the dog."
"Oh!" replied Ollie. "Well, I'm not. Come on," and he stalked ahead very bravely, while the man followed cautiously behind.
"He's a Mexican," said Smith in explanation afterwards. "All Mexicans are afraid of dogs."
"That's a pretty broad statement," said Jack, after Smith had gone. "I believe, if there was a good reward offered, that I could find a Mexican who isn't afraid of dogs. Though perhaps it's the hair they're afraid of; Mexican dogs don't have any, you know."
"Don't any of them have hair?" asked Ollie.
"Not a hair," answered his truthful uncle. "I don't suppose a Mexican dog would know a hair if he saw it."
"I think that's a bigger story than Smith's," said Ollie.
It was Sunday, and we spent most of the day in the wagon, though we took a long walk up the valley in the afternoon. The first thing Ollie said the next morning was, "When are we going to see the buffaloes?"
Smith had been telling us about them the evening before. They were down town, and belonged to a Dr. McGillicuddie. They had been brought in recently from the Rosebud Indian Agency, and had been captured some time before in the Bad Lands.
We followed the trail, now as deep with mud as it had been with dust, meeting many freighters on the way, and found the buffaloes near the Deadwood stage barn.
"See!" exclaimed Ollie; "there they are in the yard."
"Don't say 'yard,'" returned Jack; "say 'corral,' with a good, strong accent on the last syllable. A yard is a corral, and a farm a ranch, and a revolver a six-shooter—and a lot more. Don't be green, Oliver."
"Oh, bother!" replied Ollie. "There's ten of 'em. See the big fellow!"
"They're nice ones, that's so," answered Jack. "I'd like to see the Yankton man we heard about try to milk that cow over in the corner."
SOME SAID IT WAS A GRIZZLY, AND OTHERS A SILVER-TIP.
After we had seen the buffaloes we wandered about town and jingled our spurs, which were quite in the fashion. We encountered a big crowd in front of one of the markets, and found that a hunter had just come in from the mountains to the west with the carcass of the biggest bear ever brought into Rapid City. Some said it was a grizzly, and others a silver-tip, and one man tried to settle the difficulty by saying that there wasn't any difference between them. But it was certainly a big bear, and filled the whole wagon-box. Ollie sidled through the crowd, and asked so many questions of the man, who was named Reynolds, that he good-naturedly gave Ollie one of the largest of the claws. It was five inches long.
At noon we went down to the camp of the freighters on the outskirts of town, near Rapid Creek. There must have been fifty "outfits"—Jack said that was the right word—and several hundred mules as many oxen, and a few horses. The animals were, most of them, wandering about wherever they pleased, the mules and horses taking their dinner out of nose-bags, and the mules keeping up a gentle exercise by kicking at one another. It seemed a hopeless confusion, but the men were sitting about on the ground, calmly cooking their dinners over little camp-fires. One man, whom we had got acquainted with in the morning at Smith's, asked us to have dinner with him, and made the invitation so pressing that we accepted. He had several gallons of coffee and plenty of bacon and canned fruit, and a peculiar kind of bread, which he had baked himself.
"I'm a-thinking," he said, "there ain't enough sal'ratus in that there bread; but I'm a poor cook, anyhow."
THE RECEIPT FOR THE SAL'RATUS BREAD.
The bread seemed to us to be already composed chiefly of saleratus, so his apology struck us as unnecessary. He very kindly wrote out the receipt on a shingle for Jack, but I stole it away from him after we got home and burned it in the camp-fire; so we escaped that.
"Your pancakes are bad enough," I said to him. "We don't care to try your saleratus bread."
Jack was a good deal worked up about the loss of his receipt, and experimented a long time to produce something like the freighter's bread without it, but as Snoozer wouldn't try the stuff he made, and he was afraid to do so himself, nothing came of it.
We enjoyed our dinner with the man, however, and Jack added further to his vocabulary in finding that the drivers of the ox teams were called "bullwhackers," and those of the mules and horses "muleskinners."
In the afternoon we climbed the hill above our camp. It gave us a long view off to the east across the level country, while away to the west were the mountain-peaks rising higher and higher. It was still cold, and the raw northeast wind moaned through the pines in a way which made us think of winter.
We went to bed early that night, so as to get a good start for Deadwood the next day. We brought the horses down from the ranch in the evening, blanketed them, and stood them out of the wind among some trees.
"Four o'clock must see us rolling out of our comfortable beds and getting ready to start," said Jack, as we turned in. "We must play we are freighters."
Jack planned better than he knew; we really "rolled out" in an exceedingly lively manner at three o'clock. We were sleeping soundly at that hour, when we were awakened by the motion of the wagon. Jack and I sat up. It was swaying from side to side, and we could hear the wheels bumping on the stones. The back end was considerably lower than the front.
"It's running down the bank!" I cried, and we both plunged through the darkness for the brake-handle. We fell over Ollie and Snoozer, and were instantly hopelessly tangled. It seemed an age, with the wagon swaying more and more, before we found the handle. Jack pushed it up hard, we heard the brake grind on the wheels outside; then there was a great bump and splash, and the wagon tilted half over and stopped. We found ourselves lying on the side of the cover, with cold water rising about us. We were not long in getting out, and discovered that the Rattletrap was capsized in the mill-race.
"Old Blacky did it!" cried Jack, as he danced around and shook his wet clothes. "I know he did. The old sinner!"
We got out the lantern and lit it. Only the hind end of the wagon was really in the race; one front wheel still clung to the bank, and the other was up in the air. Ollie got in and began to pass things out to Jack, while I went up the hill after the horses. Jack was right. Old Blacky was evidently the author of our misfortune. He had broken loose in some manner, and probably begun his favorite operation of making his toilet on the corner of the wagon by rubbing against it. The brake had carelessly been left off, he had pushed the wagon back a few feet, and it had gone over the bank. I soon had the harness on the horses, and got them down the hill. We hitched them to the hind wheel with a long rope, Jack wading in the water to his waist, and pulled the wagon upright. Then we attached them to the end of the tongue, and after hard work drew it out of the race. By this time we were chilled through and through. Our beds and nearly everything we had were soaking with water.
"How do you like it, Uncle Jack?" inquired Ollie. "Do you feel that you are living now?"
Jack's teeth were chattering. "Y—yes," he said; "but I won't be if we don't get a fire started pretty quick."
There were some timbers from an old bridge near by, and we soon had a good fire, around which we tramped in a procession till our clothes were fairly dry. The wind was chilly, and it was a dark cloudy morning. The unfortunate Snoozer had gone down with the rest of us, and was the picture of despair, till Ollie rubbed him with a dry corner of a blanket, and gave him a good place beside the fire.
By the time two or three hours had elapsed we began to feel partially dry, and decided to start on, relying on exercise to keep ourselves warm. We had had breakfast in the mean time, and, on the whole, were feeling rather cheerful again. We opened the cover and spread out the bedding, inside and outside, and hung some of it on a long pole which we stuck into the wagon from the rear. Altogether we presented a rather funny appearance as we started out along the trail, but no one paid much attention to us. The freighters were already astir, and we were constantly passing or meeting their long trains. Among others we passed Eugene Brooks, the man with whom we had taken dinner. We told him of our mishap, and he laughed, and said:
"That's nothing in this country. Something's always happening here which would kill folks anywhere else. You stay here awhile and you'll be as tough as your old black horse."
Brooks had an outfit of five spans of mules and two wagons. We staid with him a half-hour, and then went on. As we could not reach Deadwood that day, he advised us to camp that night where the trail crossed Thunder Butte Creek, a branch of La Belle Fourche.
The trail led for the most part through valleys or along the sides of hills, and was generally not far from level, though there was, of course, a constant though hardly perceptible rise as we got farther into the mountains. We camped at noon at Elk Creek, and made further progress at drying our household effects. We pressed on during the afternoon, and passed through the town of Sturgis, where we laid in some stores of provisions to take the place of those spoiled by the water, and also a quantity of horse-feed. We congratulated ourselves later on our good luck in doing this.
As the afternoon wore away we found ourselves getting up above the timber-line. The mountains began to shut in our view in all directions, and the valleys were narrowing. As night drew nearer, Jack said:
"Seems to me it's about time we got to this Thunder Butte Creek. He said that if we passed Sturgis we'd have to go on to that if we wanted water."
We soon met a man, and inquired of him the distance to the desired stream. "Two miles," he replied, promptly. We went on as much as a mile and met another man, to whom we put the same question. "Three miles," he answered, with great decision.
"That creek seems to be retreating," said Jack, after the man had gone on. "We've got to hurry and catch it, or it will run clean into Deadwood and crawl down a gold-mine."
It was growing dark. We forged ahead for another mile, and by this time it was quite as dark as it was going to be, with a cloudy sky, and mountains and pines shutting out half of that. I was walking ahead with the lantern, and came to a place where the trail divided.
"The road forks here," I called. "Which do you suppose is right?"
"Which seems to be the most travelled?" asked Jack.
"Can't see any difference," I replied. "We'll have to leave it to the instinct of the horses."
"Yes, I'd like to put myself in the grasp of Old Blacky's instinct. The old scoundrel would go wrong if he knew which was right."
"Well," I returned, "come on and see which way he turns, and then go the other way." (Jack always declared that the old fellow understood what I said.)
He drove up to the forks, and Blacky turned to the right. Jack drew over to the left, and we went up that road. We continued to go up it for fully three miles, though we soon became convinced that it was wrong. It constantly grew narrower and apparently less travelled. We were soon winding along a mountain-side among the pines, and around and above and below great rocks.
"We'll go till we find a decent place to camp, and then stop for the night," said Jack.
We finally came to a little level bench covered with giant pines, and we could hear water beyond. I went on with the lantern, and found a small stream leaping down a gulch.
"This is the place to stop," I said, and we soon had our camp established, and a good fire roaring up into the tree-tops. Ollie found plenty of dry pine wood, and we blanketed the horses and stood under a protecting ledge. It was cold, and the wind roared down the gulch and moaned in the pines, but we scarcely felt it blow. We finished drying our bedding and had a good supper. Jack got out his banjo and tried to compete with the brook and the pines. We went to bed feeling that we were glad we had missed the road, since it had brought so delightful a camping-place.
Ollie was the first to wake in the morning. It was quite light.
"What makes the cover sag down so?" he asked.
Jack opened his eyes, reached up with the whipstock and raised it. Something slid off the outside with a rush.
"Open the front and you'll see," answered Jack.
Ollie did so, and we all looked out. The ground was deep with snow, and it was still falling in great feathery flakes. Old Blacky was loose, and looked in at us with a wicked gleam in his eyes.