The next day we set out well mounted, and pushed on with renovated spirits towards Bagdad. Hassan could no more have the assurance to censure laughing; and, as I was little disposed to do it in time of danger, we were likely to agree well. In short, we began to like one another’s company; and if I brought him to be a greater laugher than he used to be, he gave himself the credit of having made me much more serious than I had been before—I profited by his instructions.
It would be an effort as idle and fruitless on my part, as unentertaining and uninteresting on yours, to attempt to give you a regular detail of our progress from Mosul to Bagdad; the same general cautions were observed, with the same occasional relaxations. Hassan still continued to treat me with a repetition of himself and his horse, his own feats and his horse’s feats; to be silent when ill-tempered, and loquacious when gay; to flog the attendants at the caravanseras; order the best horses, and eat the best victuals, and to give me the best of both; and finally, we had our fallings out and fallings in again: but I had not the mortification of seeing any more women tied in sacks on horses’ backs, and excoriated with a ride of fifty miles a day.
As we rode along we overtook several times straggling callenders, a kind of Mahomedan monks, who profess poverty and great sanctity; they were dressed all in rags, covered with filth, carried a gourd, by way of bottle, for water—I presume sometimes for wine too—and bore in their hands a long pole decorated with rags, and pieces of cloth of various colours. They are supposed by the vulgar to have supernatural powers: but Hassan, who seemed to have caught all his ideas from his betters, expressed no sort of opinion of them; he salam’d to them, and gave them money, however. It was extraordinary enough, that they were all in one story—all were going on a pilgrimage to Mecca—or, as they call it, Hadje.
As soon as ever we got out of their sight and hearing, Hassan shook his head, and repeated “Hadje, Hadje!” several times doubtingly, and grinned, as he was accustomed to do when he was displeased, without being able to manifest anger. “Hadje!” he would cry, “Hadje, Hadje!” I asked him what he meant; and he said, that these fellows were no more going to Mecca than I was. “I have a thousand and a thousand times,” said he, “met callenders on the road, and always found them facing towards Mecca. If I am going southward, I always overtake them; if northward, I meet them; and all the time they are going wherever their business carries them. I overtook,” continued he, “one of them one day, and I gave him alms and passed him by; he was coming, he said, after me, towards Mecca: but I halted on purpose for a day, and he never passed; and a merchant arriving at the same caravansera informed me, he had met the very same fellow four leagues farther northward; who had answered him with the same story, and still had his face turned towards the south.”
Fifty years ago, no man in Turkey would have dared to hold this language; but every day’s experience evinces that the light of reason spreads its rays fast through the world—even through Turkey; and furnishes a well founded hope, that in another half century every monkish impostor (I mean real impostors), whether they be Mahomedan monks, or Christian monks, will be chased from society, and forced to apply to honest means for subsistence.
END OF PART II.
A
JOURNEY TO INDIA, &c.