OF THE THERMODON. 
093 
with the old fortress; and gladly we dismounted at its little 
humble door at four o’clock. We had been eleven hours from 
Kara-Hissar; and that was exactly the distance estimated by the 
people of the country, but in English measurement I should call 
it thirty miles. For myself, I was so fatigued by the length 
of time we had sat on horseback, and under such additional 
anxieties of the night, that I felt too happy to throw myself 
down on a mat in one corner of the room in the post-house, to 
think of taking any other refreshment; so left Sedak and my 
Tatars to regale with pipes and coffee, while I enjoyed an almost 
instantaneous sleep. At six o’clock, however, the usual clarion 
of these places roused me. The Tatars and post-house people 
were quarrelling about our horses, none being to be hired for 
less than six piastres each ; and even then they were not to be 
had immediately ; this stage and the next having the singular 
privilege of taking them up from the different adjacent villages. 
Ahmed Aga was obliged to accede to their terms ; and eleven 
being the number we wanted, the whole of the remainder of the 
day was passed amidst that dominion of dirt and confusion, a 
common Turkish post-house, vainly expecting every moment 
the arrival of our only means of escape. The motionless apathy 
with which the servants of the place attended to the urging of 
the Tatars to hasten such dilatory proceedings, was almost be¬ 
yond patience to bear ; and for the great turbaned head of the 
department himself, the very essence of proud ignorance, having- 
got possession of the piastres, all the remonstrances and threats 
Ahmed Aga addressed to him, might as well have been talked 
to the air. He sat still, looking at both the vociferous Janissaries 
(for both attacked him) with the most undisturbed silent indif¬ 
ference ; and the more they enforced the consequence of speed 
