The cavalry sounded its trumpet as it jumped the Rubicon, and just as it reached the corner leading to the fortified camp, the whole army of the East came to its support. Wasn’t the army of the West up a tree about this time? The battle was short, sharp, and decisive. The army of the West was “licked” out of its boots, and with shattered battalions and wide gaps in its ranks it came limping and howling home, leaving the ground covered with a debris of ears and tails.
They made a brief halt at the frontier whither they were pursued, but only stopped long enough to intimate that they would get even sometime.
Whether they have ever done so history does not record. The despatches from our ambassador at the court of His Majesty, the Sultan, made no mention of the matter, and a similar remissness has been observed in the reports of Sir Henry Elliott to the British Government.
The dog in the Orient is considered an unclean and disreputable beast, and one of the worst epithets applicable to living things is the term “dog.” The Moslem was once accustomed to speak of “Christian dogs” whenever he had occasion to allude to people of the Occident, just as the Chinese are to this day in the habit of designating-them as “fankwei,” “foreign devils.” Sometimes a delicate allusion is made to the maternal descent from the canine race, where the speaker wishes to lay it on fine, and if he wants to be especially choice and emphatic, he would denounce an offending Occidental, as “Father of all dogs.”
Donkey drivers all through the Orient urge their beasts forward by shouting, “Empchy, ya kelb,” (go on you dog,) but the donkeys do not appear to mind it. I was repeatedly impressed with the similarity of Arab and Russian drivers, as the epithet Kelb which the former apply to their donkeys and camels, has exactly the meaning of “sabaka” which the Russian yemshik yells out to his horse. The dogs of Constantinople are so accustomed to the sight of people in European dress, that they do not pretend to attack them, for the simple reason that they would have a larger contract on hand than they could conveniently fill. But the case is different in places less frequented by foreigners. In Damascus, when our party made the tour of the walls, the dogs annoyed us greatly by hanging around and keeping up a very loud and angry barking.
