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sturdy little Kurdish horses, besides having three 

 shaggy mountain ponies to carry our baggage, or 

 rather to carry whatever we might pick up, for a 

 Bashi-Bazouk always returns heavier laden than 

 when he set out, if he knows his trade. 



The cognomen " Bashi-Bazouk " is a composite 

 Turkish word for a class of individuals who would 

 be allowed to exist in no country in the world save 

 Turkey, or perhaps Central America, where the 

 term " filibuster " appears to be almost synonymous. 

 It is derived from " Bash," a head ; " ba," without ; 

 " zouk," bra{7is — literally, though not in reality, " a 

 head without brains : " certainly not an appropriate 

 name for men who have to live by their wits. 

 Among the horde I commanded on the Danube 

 before our troops landed at Varna, I counted men 

 of twenty-seven different nations and castes. 



My troop were a queer set, and merit a slight 

 description. Hoossain, an Arnout, had been a 

 " chaus " or sergeant, in one of the Turkish regi- 

 ments engaged at Silistria, and having been de- 

 puted to wait upon me by Moosa Pacha, (the gallant 

 Arab leader who was afterwards killed on the ram- 

 parts by the explosion of a shell during the siege,) 

 found my service preferable to soldiering, at the 

 nominal pay of twenty piastres per mensem, (then 

 twenty-two months in arrears,) and, as he was a 

 plucky, honest, and useful fellow, I kept him always 

 with me. Fortune had dealt kindly with him ; and 

 as he had managed, by hook or by crook, to amass 



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