ROBBERY OF A JANISSARY. 
681 
ing that higher tone of principles which can only be gained in 
Christendom. 
November 11th. — When we paraded this morning in pre¬ 
paration for departure, I found my Tatars recurring to the old 
necessity for augmented numbers. Ahmed Aga openly declared 
his apprehension of being robbed; and Ismael Aga, having once 
suffered that calamity, was equally loath to have it repeated. The 
hazard of such an event, I doubt not, was sufficiently probable to 
make the strictest precaution necessary; but with such a couple 
of determined cowards under a military garb, it was never my ill 
luck to move before. The latter hero, it seems, while travelling 
the very ground we were now to traverse at this particularly dan¬ 
gerous juncture, had the misfortune to be attacked by two wander¬ 
ing mountaineers. He was completely armed, a great advantage 
over his wild assailants ; but they managed to rob and strip him ; 
and having tied him to a tree, beat him till tired of the sport 
of drubbing a Janissary. He was then left in this disgraceful 
plight, after sustaining the loss of five purses, three the property 
of the Pasha of Kars, two of his own, and with all his raiment 
besides, including his dagger and embossed pistols; nay, the 
villains even mounted themselves on his two post-horses. 
When the latter theft is fully committed, suspicion usually im¬ 
plicates the surragees or leaders of the baggage-horses ; in all 
marauding wars, these itinerant men being generally regarded as 
neutrals, but either from fear, or a wish tQ play booty, they 
sometimes fall in with the Chappow, when they might have 
galloped off to safety with some of the laden cattle at least. 
Sedak and myself stood quietly by, during the joint attempts 
of our two heroes to move the village and its dictator; but neither 
words nor piastres having more effect in the morning than at 
4 s 
VOL. II. 
