1 66 BIRD-HUNTING 



instructions from Constantinople to do so. But 

 promises in Turkey are not always meant to be kept. 



The way this man performed his duty was funny. 

 All I had to do was to provide my boatmen with 

 a sufficiency of rum. I was then quite free to do 

 what I liked — I could have surveyed the whole 

 place, or done anything else, while he was imbibing 

 rum out of the bottle. When at the end of the day 

 we left him at the landing-place opposite his guard- 

 house, he was always exceedingly drunk, waving in 

 farewell a big blue cotton umbrella in one hand, and 

 his loaded rifle in the other. I was always very 

 glad to see the last of him, for he used in his 

 drunken way to point his rifle at any of us, and in 

 the state he was in an accidental touch of the 

 trigger was not by any means an unlikely thing to 

 happen. 



Before he used to come with me his officer 

 accompanied our party one day. A very smart, 

 good-looking man he was too, and spoke a little 

 French. 



But he was no more efficient in watching me than 

 his subordinate. We had gone some distance up 

 the river to enlist the services of a family of 

 Albanian mountaineers in exploring some sub- 

 merged forests which looked promising, but on arrival 

 at their house so much time was taken up in the 

 duties of hospitality that I thought I should never 



