Our first night we spent in the city of Adana, the present metropolis of the Plain, a city of 30,000 inhabitants, as geographers tell us, and, as they do not tell us, of as many mosquitoes to each inhabitant. We made a careful estimate of them that very night. In fact it was not without considerable anxiety that we waited to see how many, and in what condition the survivors would be who would respond to the breakfast call next morning. For myself, I had thought that that morning would never come; or, if it did, it would come too late for me to derive any benefit from it in this present life. I noticed that the roosters around town seemed to entertain the same opinion. They started in about midnight with considerable confidence, and once in a while would all take hold and lift together in one grand crow, and then settle back disappointed—there was a hitch somewhere, the sun would not up. In the meantime, a tender regard for the feelings of my readers would not allow me to attempt any description of our sufferings—only this, that after exhausting every stratagem I could think of to outwit the enemy—all to no purpose—I simply threw back the bedclothes in the madness of despair, and said,“Come on, then, if you want to!” And they came. They came in ranks and squadrons, wing touching wing, like Milton’s fallen angels when they went down with whir and rustle and clatter of stumpy wings into the pit. And as fast as they came I lifted my hand and slaughtered them—or rather, thought I did.
Then it occurred to me, in my half-asleep condition, that I would gather up those dead mosquitoes and pile them into a monument, so that if I should be devoured alive there would at least be something to mark the spot. But before I could find mosquitoes enough to lay the corner-stone, I fell asleep. I dreamed I was bodily lifted up on wings and borne through the air. I passed over island and ocean and continent and ocean again. And just as I came in sight of my home and saw my mother on the doorstep, there was an awful crash, and then a groan, and somebody said, “Great Caesar!” I awoke to see my friend Lee sitting upright in bed, listening with head bent forward, as if his life depended on his hearing something—his hands were uplifted and spread wide. Then there was the feeble first note of a song in the air, and the hands came together with fearful precision, and I thought, “Well, that mosquito has sung his doxology any way.” But there was no more sleep that night, and when the morning came we were a sorry company to think of starting on a long pilgrimage that day.
A TIN-SMITH’S SHOP.
All the forenoon we were making preparations for our journey. There were horses to obtain, and donkeys and saddles and provisions and servants, so that it was the middle of the afternoon before we were ready to start. We were going that day’s journey in company with a small caravan. Now, if a person has never seen a caravan get under way, he has something still in this world to live for. In the first place, when the horses and donkeys are brought together, as they were in this case, into the narrow courtyard of the house to be loaded, it seems to occur to all of them at once that the proper thing for them to do under such circumstances is—to kick. And they evidently think that what is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.
A MOUNTAIN MENDICANT.
I left my horse standing a moment to run up stairs, and when I returned, which was at the call of Mr. Lee to “come and hold your horse,” that animal of mine had made a circuit round that yard, like a comet round the sun—heels first, and left a clean swath behind him all the way. And when you add to all this confusion the crying of servants, the barking and yelping of dogs, the howling of babies, and above all, the screaming of camels and that excruciating bray of the jackass which makes you willing to stake all you possess that he can’t do that again and live through it; why, then you can gather some faint idea of what the starting of a caravan is on a small scale.
We mounted our horses and marched off in magnificent procession. They say that the grandest moment in the life of a boy—that moment when first he feels that there was no hap-hazard about his being born, but is conscious that he came into this world for a purpose, is when for the first time he gets on a pair of red-topped boots. They are the cradle and that is the birthday of all his after greatness. And I think that it is equally true that the very sublimest and topmost event in the life of any young man is when, with a belt full of pistols, a heart bursting with valor and a spur on his heel he puts his foot into the stirrup and swings himself across the back of a horse. I am ready to admit that it was so with me. I felt as though somebody ought to go ahead on the road and let people know that I was coming but that I wasn’t dangerous and probably wouldn’t hurt anybody. I remembered that it was the same country where the Apostle Paul had been taken for Mercury and Barnabas for Jupiter, and I thought that likely enough this people would take it into their heads that I was the War God, Mars, let loose upon them and careering through their country breathing fire from my nostrils and striking out hot lightnings from my horse’s hoofs.
