[23] These coffers are covered with web-cloth, girted with cords: they are extremely useful in travelling; and, speaking from six years’ experience, it may be averred that, though apparently so rickety and fragile, they resist longer than any other species of travelling-trunk of Turkish manufacture, and have the advantage of peculiar lightness. They will not certainly bear a comparison with English leather trunks: but I would still recommend every one who visits Turkey to leave behind him as much as possible what is not in the fashion of the country, for fear of exciting the cupidity of the natives, who are too apt to imagine everything strange to be valuable.
[24] I afterwards saw this same Iachimo, in the year 1819, in the service of some English travellers in Syria. He was by this time exalted to the rank of dragoman.
[25] Our party was made up of the following persons: Lady Hester Stanhope, Mr. B., Mr. Pearce, and myself; Mrs. Fry, Lady Hester’s maid; a cook, two valets, both Cypriots, and Iachimo, the Ragusan, my servant. There was likewise an akkam, or tent-pitcher.
[26] As these men had now been in the country twelve or fourteen years, they spoke the language, and were acquainted with the character of the people, so that they could serve in the double capacity of guards and interpreters.
[27] These porters, who carry burdens under which an English porter would sink, are provided with a cushion made of old sacking stuffed with rushes. This hangs a little below the shoulder-blades, and on it their burden rests; it is kept steady by a long cord which goes round the forehead. As they walk under their load, they bend the body forward, the trunk forming almost a right angle with the lower extremities.
[28] The two which Mr. Damiani owned were let at 4000 piasters per annum, as he said. It is true, they were very large, and well stocked with lemon, orange, almond, peach, pear, apple, pomegranate, and other trees. But these trees were yet young; for, in the invasion of the French, the orchards were destroyed for fire-wood. This was now a period of fifteen or sixteen years before; and there can be no greater proof of the fertility of the soil, and of the quickness of vegetation, than the rapid growth of these orchards.
[29] Of the Mamelukes of the Pasha el Gezzàr there were yet alive six—Solyman, Pasha of Acre; Mohammed, Governor of Jaffa; Musa, motsellem of Gebâa; Khalyl, motsellem of Nabatéa; Solyman Effendy, motsellem of Sayda; and Hossayn Aga, collector of the customs at Latakia.
[30] I would apologize for inserting routes so often described, if it were not that I feel I may be able to rectify some errors both in distances and in the names of places, which are found in the books of many travellers, owing to their ignorance of the Arabic language, and the consequent difficulty of acquiring correct information. Routes are, no doubt, uninteresting to most readers; as much, therefore, as possible has been thrown into the appendix.
[31] Pococke.
[32] It is not to be imagined that pulling off the turban is like pulling off the hat: it is more than that, as those who wear turbans have the head close shaved, and consequently expose a bald pate when they take it off: a Turk never would do it. We took off our shoes also.