[38] “We reached the plain near a small village, inhabited only during the seed time.” Burckhardt, v. ii. p. 207. This village was that where we now sought shelter.
[39] Emiry is feminine, emir masculine.—These were the titles the pasha always gave her in speaking of her. I therefore conceived they were what she was legitimately entitled to in that country. Her Presence is no more an absurd title than her Highness, her Grace, his Excellency, his Worship, and many other terms and qualities which use has consecrated to rank.
[40] By προσκύνησις I understand the salutation, in use among the Romans, of carrying the points of the fingers to the mouth, and kissing them, which is the customary mode still practised throughout Turkey from an inferior to a superior. Our word adoration (os, oris) is derived from this gesture, and by no means implies prostration or genuflexion. Sir R. K. Porter, in his Travels in Persia, p. 665, I think, makes a mistake, in attributing this mode of salutation to another cause. His words are—“In front of the sovereign appears a man in a short tunic and plain bonnet, carrying his right hand to his mouth, to prevent his breath exhaling towards the august personage.” Sir R. seems not to have been aware that the answer to every question put by a great man to an inferior is accompanied by this very gesture. Facciolati (Tot. Lat. Lex.) defines adoratio by “precatio, manu ad os admotâ et flexo corpore facta.”
[41] Afterwards Pasha of Acre, until taken prisoner by Ibrahim Pasha.
[42] These Hawàrys were from Barbary, and the dingy colour of their complexions distinguished them from soldiers of other parts of the empire. I know not what pay the colonel, or the person whose duties answered to those of our colonels, had: but he was reputed to increase his income in this way. A regiment was composed of so many bayraks or standards, each consisting of four men: but, instead of four, as rated, there were generally only two or three on actual service; and, in cases of muster, temporary substitutes were found.
[43] The word kys, or purse, means a specific sum of 500 piasters. On the 5th of April, whilst we were at Ascalon, news was brought of his death.
[44] The obstinacy of the English, and of Europeans in general who visit the East, often leads them into disagreeable and dangerous situations. When endeavours are used to divert them from any purpose where the difficulties which are represented are not quite obvious, and can only be foreseen by persons used to the country, they fancy their advisers are playing with them, and thus persist in their purpose, until they find themselves attacked by robbers, carried away by a torrent, or embedded in snow.
[45] Memoirs of Lady Hester Stanhope, 1st edit., vol. ii. p. 184.
[46] I here lost a glass-stoppered bottle, which I had entrusted to the hands of some one standing near me; and I observed, on every occasion where crystal bottles with glass stoppers once got into the possession of any one in Syria, they were never to be recovered. It was an article not attainable there but by gift, and possessed in the eyes of the inhabitants great value for holding elixirs, essences, &c.
[47] Yet it had required three hours fifteen minutes to do it in, on a former occasion.