From his thigh to his throat
he was loaded with arms and other implements of a campaigning life.
There is no scarcity of water along the whole road from Belgrade to
Stamboul, but the habits of our Tatar were formed by his ancestors
and not by himself, so he took good care to see that his leathern
water-flask was amply charged and properly strapped to the saddle,
along with his blessed tchibouque. And now at last he has cursed
the Suridgees in all proper figures of speech, and is ready for a
ride of a thousand miles; but before he comforts his soul in the
marble baths of Stamboul he will be another and a lesser man; his
sense of responsibility, his too strict abstemiousness, and his
restless energy, disdainful of sleep, will have worn him down to a
fraction of the sleek Moostapha that now leads out our party from
the gates of Belgrade.
The Suridgees are the men employed to lead the baggage-horses.
They are most of them gipsies. Their lot is a sad one: they are
the last of the human race, and all the sins of their superiors
(including the horses) can safely be visited on them. But the
wretched look often more picturesque than their betters; and though
all the world despise these poor Suridgees, their tawny skins and
their grisly beards will gain them honourable standing in the
foreground of a landscape.
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