368 The Hunting Grounds 



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 "filibus- 

 ter " appears to be almost synonymous. It is derived 

 from " Bash," a head " ba," without, " Zouk, " brains, 

 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 serjeant, in one of the Turkish regiments 

 engaged at Silistria, and having been deputed to wait 

 upon me by Moosa Pacha (the gallant Arab leader 

 who was afterwards killed on the ramparts 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 



