The Tatar, you know, is a government courier
properly employed in carrying despatches, but also sent with
travellers to speed them on their way, and answer with his head for
their safety. The man whose head was thus pledged for our precious
lives was a glorious-looking fellow, with the regular and handsome
cast of countenance which is now characteristic of the Ottoman
race. {4} His features displayed a good deal of serene pride,
self-respect, fortitude, a kind of ingenuous sensuality, and
something of instinctive wisdom, without any sharpness of
intellect. He had been a Janissary (as I afterwards found), and
kept up the odd strut of his old corps, which used to affright the
Christians in former times--that rolling gait so comically pompous,
that a close imitation of it, even in the broadest farce, would be
looked upon as a very rough over-acting of the character. It is
occasioned in part by dress and accoutrements. The weighty bundle
of weapons carried upon the chest throws back the body so as to
give it a wonderful portliness, and moreover, the immense masses of
clothes that swathe his limbs force the wearer in walking to swing
himself heavily round from left to right, and from right to left.
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