passed round, and I had no more cases of fits to attend to during the march.
I shared a tent with Mehemet Ali, the paymaster, who turned out to be a really good fellow. He was a little man with a very fair complexion—his mother was a Circassian—and he had twinkling steel grey eyes. He was the strongest man I ever met. I had a horse, but I still wanted a servant, so Mehemet Ali brought up four men for my inspection. I chose a man named Ahmet, an Asiatic Turk and a married man with five children. He turned out a splendid servant; but, poor fellow, he never saw his home again, and his bones lie buried with those of many of his countrymen on the banks of the Danube at Widdin.
Next morning I was given to understand that I should have to see a number of patients; however, I fortified myself with two or three Turkish phrases, and went my rounds without trepidation. My diagnosis was in each case remarkable for simplicity, and I asked few needless questions. My first remark was invariably, "Dilli nitchika," which means, "Put out your tongue." If the man seemed really feverish and bad, I remarked authoritatively, "Hoiti araba," which means, "Go to the waggon," and I allowed him to ride in the waggon instead of route-marching. If I had any doubts as to the genuineness of the indisposition, I ejaculated sharply, "Hoiti balook," which means, "Go to your company." Of course all the men who were really ill I made to take two paces to the rear, and when my inspection was finished I prescribed for them, and dispensed my prescriptions from the well equipped regimental medicine chest.
It took the regiment five days altogether to march to Sofia, the colonel, the two majors, the paymaster, an adjutant, and myself being the only mounted officers. At first the route lay through mountainous and very picturesque country, heavily timbered with pines, beeches, elms, and walnuts. The walnut trees seemed to grow wild throughout the country, and the nuts were in great profusion.
One night we stopped at the Bulgarian village of Ichtiman, and for the first time I saw Bulgarians at close quarters and slept in a Bulgarian house. Dirt appeared to be the national characteristic of Bulgaria, and a cheerful disregard of all sanitary rules a leading feature in the national disposition. For size and ferocity I have never seen the domestic insects of Bulgaria equalled; and in the brief armistices which occurred in the unequal combats of that horrible night, I longed for my clean and cosy quarters in the paymaster's tent again. The Bulgarian men are tall and fair, and the samples that came under my notice wore huge bonnets of black sheepskin and baggy garments of a kind of coarse yellow frieze of their own weaving. Instead of boots they wore sandals laced to the knee in Spanish fashion, and their whole appearance was grimy and forbidding to a degree. Most of the inhabitants of the village disappeared into the surrounding hills on our arrival, and the few who remained forbore to present us with an address of welcome or to erect a triumphal arch in our honour. Sullenly and suspiciously they offered us bowls of yuoart to eat, a horrible sticky mess made of curdled milk, of which I partook to my subsequent sorrow.
At last we came in sight of Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. It lay at the farther end of a great plain dotted here and there with Bulgarian villages, well watered by a river running through it, and nicely timbered like a great park. Against the dark background of the hills, to use a pretty line of Tennyson's, "the city sparkled like a grain of salt." Sofia was then a place of about twenty thousand inhabitants, and the seat of government. At one time the famous Midhat Pasha was the governor of this vilayet.
The regiment moved in column of route along the main road through the plain towards the white houses glinting in the sunshine, every man stepping jauntily as the close of the long march drew near. But Sofia looked better at a distance than it did under our noses. At that time there was only one hotel in the place, a filthy little cabaret kept by a Greek, whose views with regard to beds and meals were most primitive. The railway runs right through from Stamboul to Sofia and beyond now, and French cooking has replaced the black bread and beans which formed the Spartan fare placed before his guests by that "base scion of a noble stock" who took us in and "did for us" in '76.
The first English-speaking person whom I met in Sofia was MacGahan, the war correspondent for a London newspaper, and from him I learnt at last where I was and what was happening round us. We dined together, and he told me how the Servians had been beaten all along the line. I found that there were four other Turkish regiments besides my own quartered in Sofia; and among the English surgeons attached to the troops I was glad to find an old friend named Stiven, with whom I could exercise my tongue at last after my enforced silence of the previous week.
However, I was already able to speak a few words of Turkish, and the paymaster used to give me lessons regularly, pointing to the different articles in our tent and repeating the Turkish word for each until I had grasped it thoroughly. I conformed to Turkish customs of course in everything, and soon accustomed myself to my new surroundings. What strikes a new chum in Turkey very much at first is the absence of chairs. I never saw a chair there; but I soon learned to sit down to dinner on my own haunches on the ground with my brother officers. A Turkish dinner was a curious meal. First my servant brought me a basin of water, soap, and towel, and I washed my hands, preparatory to attacking the soup with my wooden spoon. Mehemet Ali and I used to eat out of the same bowl, dipping our wooden spoons in alternately. The pièce de résistance was invariably pilaf, or boiled rice, with little bits of meat cut up in it, and sometimes scraps of chicken or turkey when we could get hold of any. The pilaf was eaten with the fingers; and the dexterity with which an experienced Turk would fossick out a tender bit of the liver, wing, or a satisfying "drumstick," from the superincumbent mass of rice reminded one strongly of a digger unearthing nuggets in a patch of rich alluvial.
It was astonishing at Sofia to notice the humane way in which the Turks treated the Bulgarians, who were to all intents and purposes a hostile people, and who never lost an opportunity of showing their hostility whenever they could do so with safety to themselves. During the whole of the time that I was in Sofia I never saw a Bulgarian ill treated; and I think it only right to emphasize this point, because, either from want of knowledge or from that tendency to take omne ignotum pro malefico which is so common to mankind, the other nations of Europe have contrived to affix the stigma of barbarous cruelty to the Turks in such a manner that it is difficult to remove or even to lessen the impression. All I can say is that, as an unprejudiced observer with ample opportunities, I never saw any cruelties inflicted during a state of peace, nor any punishments dealt out to Bulgarians except in cases where they were fully deserved. The Turk when under fire does not fight with rose-water any more than the soldier of reputedly more civilized nations; but if needless barbarities were committed by both Turks and Russians when their blood was up, one has to remember the grim remark of the great Frenchman that one cannot have an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
It was in Sofia that I was called in to attend my first lady patient; and the case is worth noting as an illustration of the difference between Eastern and Western methods of diagnosis. In Turkey a practitioner does not get much to go on in forming an opinion. A wealthy old Turk in the town who had an extensive harem wanted advice for one of his wives, and I was asked to call and see her. I gladly accepted the opportunity, and followed my guides, a couple of eunuchs, and an interpreter to a fine house, where they took me upstairs and halted outside a thick, heavy curtain reaching from the ceiling to the floor. Inside was the harem, an institution which I had always had a scientific curiosity to see, and at last I felt that my ambition in this direction was to be realized. A few low spoken words in Turkish were whispered at the edge of the curtain by a tall black-garbed eunuch, and then I heard the rustle of draperies approaching on the other side. A low toned colloquy ensued between the eunuch, who seemed to be threatening, and my interesting patient, whose accents had in them a touch of plaintive entreaty. Presently a white and beautifully moulded arm was shyly insinuated through the space between the wall and the edge of the curtain, while the eunuch bade me, through the mediumship of the interpreter, diagnose the complaint from which the fair one suffered and prescribe a remedy. The hand was small and finely formed, and above the wrist was a heavy bangle of beaten gold. I felt the pulse, which was fluttering and unsteady, and clasped the white and tremulous fingers, feeling that with such slight data to go upon any treatment that I could prescribe would not be likely to enhance my reputation. Accordingly I demanded to be admitted, in order that I might see and question the patient, whom I judged to be a Circassian or a Georgian girl certainly not more than one and twenty, and probably pretty.