It was at least as agreeable to starve on the non-proceeds of landscape painting as on those of journalism, and when nothing in the way of meat and drink was to be got out of either, it was only a choice as to the form of euthanasia.  I guessed I could make no money out of painting; but I knew by practical experience that there was nothing to be made by journalism.

I was daubing in a friend’s chambers when the angel of opportunity came.  He appeared in the form of an American gentleman with a fur collar and an astonishing Massachusetts accent.  War had been actually declared between Russia and Turkey a week or two before.  The Russians were already at Giurgevo, building a bridge of boats with intent to cross the Danube, and the Turks were gathered in force at Rustchuk and Schumla.  So much I knew from I the newspapers, but no further intelligence of the opening campaign had reached me.

It was the twelfth of May of that year when we set sail down the Adriatic, and I had never seen anything so heavenly beautiful as the coast and sea.  We were five days on our journey; and now, when I have travelled the wide world over, have seen most of its show places, and have made myself familiar with exotic beauties of the landscape and seascape sort, I can recall nothing like that five days’ dream of heaven.  Perhaps the fact that I was going to look at war for the first time, and had some premonition of its horrors, made the placid loveliness of the Mediterranean more charming and exquisite by a kind of foreseen contrast.  But I do not remember to have beheld (and I do not think I shall fail to remember it all till the day I die) anything so beautiful as the far-off islands that lifted their purple heads as we steamed through the Piraeus, and the long-drawn wonderful panoramic splendours of the Mediterranean sunsets.  I have travelled in many ships since then, and have never missed the inevitable fool.  There is always a fool aboard ship; and I remember one day when we were within sight of Corfu that the fool who was our local property for the moment touched me on the shoulder as I hung over the bows, and pointed to the island.

‘They say that’s land,’ said he, ’but you d think it was a sweetmeat.  Looks good to eat, doesn’t it?  It’s like them biled violet things in sugar that they sell in Paris.’

I was all on fire to see the interior of my first Eastern city, and when I saw the domes and minarets of Constantinople actually before me, the traveller’s instinct was quickened to a passion.  We got in at sundown, and behind the picturesque roofs of the town lay an amber and crimson mystery of light, which was half-obscured by the smoke and steam of a score or two of vessels.  The whole scene looked like a smeared landscape from the hand of Turner.  He, at least, would have seen to it that the colour was clear; but Nature is very often behind the artist, and the effect was grossly muddy and untransparent.

In common with the rest of the world I had heard of baksheesh, but until then I never understood its magic power.  A huge functionary took charge of my trunk and portmanteau, and impounded them so decisively in the name of the law that I had made up my mind to see neither of them any more.  The captain of the boat whispered in my ear that a mejidieh would do it, I tried a French five-franc piece! which proved instantly efficacious; and a minute or two later I was on shore at Galata, astride a donkey whose tail was industriously twisted round by his driver, and who was followed by an unequally laden brother ass, who bore my portmanteau on one flank and my trunk upon another.

We scrambled up the stony road towards the main street of Pera.  The city had looked like a Turneresque dream from the outside, but known from within it was the home of ugliness, and of stinks innumerable.  The yellow dogs tripped the feet as often as the abominable pavement, and seemed as immovable and as much a part of the road itself.  Now and again in the side streets a whole horde howled like a phalanx of advancing wolves; but they were outside the parish of the brutes who encumbered the roadway I had to travel, and though the noise of war was near, the canine regiment not actually called to fight rested immobile, its members suffering themselves to be kicked by foot passengers, trodden on by cattle, and rolled over by wheels with an astonishing stolidity.

We reached the hotel in time for an admirable dinner-the precursor of many admirable meals, whose only fault was that they were built too much on one pattern.  We were served, as I recall too well, with tomato soup, red mullet, quail, tomato farcie, and cutlet.  Next morning at breakfast came red mullet, quail, and tomato farcie.  At luncheon came red mullet, quail, tomato farcie, and cutlet At dinner came tomato soup, red mullet, tomato farcie, quail, and cutlet.  It was a charming menu-for once:  but when we had gone on with it for a week my travelling companions and myself grew a little weary of it, and would fain have found a change.  Poor Campbell-Schipka Campbell we called him afterwards-had arrived with an earlier boatload of adventurers and was staying at the Hotel de Misserie.  Captain Tiburce Morrisot, of the Troisième Chasseurs, stayed at the Byzance; and we three made a party together to dine at Valori’s and to escape the eternal red mullet, tomato farcie, and quail.

We found there an astonishing German waiter who seemed, more or less, to speak every language under heaven.  There were in the cafe Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, Turks, Bulgars, Germans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen, and people, for aught I know, of half a dozen other nationalities; and the head waiter addressed each and all of these in turn in any language which might be addressed to him.  One of us asked him with how many tongues he was familiar, and he answered, with an apologetic aspect, ‘Onily twelf.’  What could we have for dinner?  ’Fery good dinner, gentlemen.  There is red mullet, there is tomato farcie, there is qvail,’ We elected finally to dine on something which was announced as roast beef and looked suspiciously like horse.  Anything was better than that eternal round of delicacies which had grown to be so tiresome.  The city was in a state of siege, and every ramble along the street was productive of interest and amusement-sometimes of a rather striking sort.  I had only been there some three or four days when, in the course of a morning stroll, I found myself in front of the Wallach Serai.  The footpaths were lined pretty thickly with loungers who had stood to watch the march-past of a regiment of Zeibecks.  The bare-legged ruffians, with their amazing beehive hats and their swagging belly-bands crammed with the antique weapons with which their ancestors had stormed Genoa, straggled past in any kind of order they chose to adopt and made their way towards the Sweet Waters of Europe, by whose shores they were destined to encamp.  When they were all gone and the stagnant tide of passage was revived there came by an old Hoja, a holy man, dressed in green robe and caftan and wearing yellow slippers-self-proclaimed as one who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca.  He was followed by a very small donkey laden with panniers.  By my side on the footwalk stood a Circassian who had been flourishing in the air, whilst the troops went by, a formidable-looking yataghan, and had been cheering in some language of which I did not understand a syllable.

This man was now standing, with an admiring crowd about him, licking the back of his wrist and shaving off the hair that grew there by way of showing the edge and temper of his weapon.  It must have been set as finely as a razor, and, like a razor, it was broad-backed and finely bevelled.  Just as the old Hoja went by, and the placid little donkey followed at his heels, the Circassian stepped into the horse-road, gave the weapon a braggadocio swing, and at a single blow divided the head of the poor little ass from the body as cleanly as any dandy swordsman of the Guards will sever a hanging sheep.  The head fell plump; but for a second or two the body stood, spouting a vivid streak of scarlet from the neck, and then toppled over.  The old green-clad Hoja turned at the noise made by the crowd, saw the blood-stained sword waving behind him, understood at a glance what had happened, and shuffled on as fast as his yellow pantoufles would carry him.