A EIDE TO BABYLON. 375 



their heads and hands on the dusty floor of the Serai 

 below. But the recruits, for the most part broad- 

 shouldered, stout-limbed men, moved not a finger in 

 self-defence, and uttered not a word of complaint. 

 The boldest of them screwed up courage and made a 

 rush by the angle of the platform to avoid the blows 

 of the tormentor. But the truculent Turk was too 

 much for them : not one escaped without a cuff or a 

 kick, or at least a curse, which annihilated him and 

 his family for generations to come. The meanest 

 official in Turkey, " clothed in brief authority," is a 

 greater despot, a greater tyrant, than the Czar of All 

 the Eussias. Any one of those Anatolians would no 

 more have thought of disputing the right of the Turk 

 to kick him, than in olden times a serf would have 

 thought of disputing the vexing rights of his feudal 

 seigneur. 



Our morning ride was across a country lamentably 

 desert and sterile. The only habitation of man we 

 passed was the khan of Bir-i-noos. Often did we 

 push our horses to the summit of some little hillock, 

 to the top of some long wave of the plain, in the 

 hopes of seeing some green tree, some green thing. 

 In vain : nothing of the kind was visible on the vast 

 rolling plain which glared, arid and parched, with a 

 fearful sameness, all around in the hot sunlight. A 

 feeling of bewilderment, of melancholy, took posses- 

 sion of us at the sight of these apparently boundless 

 imperviable wastes a feeling much akin to that 



