Bulgaria | Page 3

can recall Turkish boot-blacks and
Turkish porters, but no Turks who looked like warriors, and if they are

cut-throats by choice (I do not believe they are) they are very
mild-mannered cut-throats indeed.
Coming back from the lines of Chatalja towards the end of 1912, I had,
for one stage of five days, between Kirk Kilisse and Mustapha Pasha, a
Turkish driver. He had been a Bulgarian subject (I gathered) before the
war, and with his cart and two horses had been impressed into the
transport service. At first with some aid from an interpreter, afterwards
mostly by signs and broken fragments of language, I got to be able to
converse with this Turk. (In the Balkans the various shreds of races
have quaint crazy-quilt patchworks of conversational language.
Somehow or other even a British citizen with more than the usual
stupidity of our race as to foreign languages can make himself
understood in the Balkan Peninsula, which is so polyglottic that its
inhabitants understand signs very well.) My Turk friend, from the very
first, filled my heart with sympathy because of his love for his horses.
Since he had come under the war-rule of the Bulgarians, he complained
to me, he had not been allowed to feed his horses properly. They were
fading away. He wept over them. Actual tears irrigated the furrows of
his weather-beaten and unwashed cheeks.
As a matter of fact the horses were in very good condition indeed,
considering all the circumstances; as good, certainly, as any horses I
had seen since I left Buda-Pesth. But my heart warmed to this
Turcoman and his love for his horses. I had been seeking in vain up to
this point for the appearance of the Terrible Turk of tradition; the Turk,
with his well-beloved Arabian steed, his
quite-secondary-in-consideration Circassian harem; the fierce,
unconquerable, disdainful, cruel Turk, manly in his vices as well as in
his virtues. My Turk had at least one recognisable characteristic in his
love for his horses. As he sorrowed over them I comforted him with a
flagon--it was of brandy and water: and the Prophet, when he forbade
wine, was ignorant of brandy, so Islam these days has its alcoholic
consolation--and I stayed him with cigarettes. He had not had a smoke
for a month and, put in possession of tobacco, he plunged into a mood
of rapt exultation, rolling cigarette after cigarette, chuckling softly as he
inhaled the smoke, turning towards me now and again with a gesture of

thanks and of respect. I had taken over the reins and the little horses
were doing very well.
[Illustration: A CONTENTED TURK]
That day, though we had started late, the horses carried us thirty-five
miles, and I camped at the site of a burned-out village. The Turk made
no objection to this. Previously coming over the same route with an
ox-cart, my Macedonian driver had objected to camping except in
occupied villages where there were garrisons. He feared Bashi-Bazouks
(the Turkish irregular bands which occasionally showed themselves in
the rear of the Bulgarian army) and wolves. Probably, too, he feared
ghosts, or was uneasy and lonely when out of range of the village
smells. Now I preferred a burned village site, because the only clean
villages were the burned ones; and for the reason of water it was
necessary to camp at some village or village site. Mr. Turk went up
hugely in my estimation when I found that he had no objections to the
site of a burned village as a camping-place.
But the first night in camp shattered all my illusions. The Turk
unharnessed and lit the camp fire. I cooked my supper and gave him a
share. Then he squatted by the fire and resumed smoking. The horses
over which he had shed tears waited. After the Turk's third cigarette I
suggested that the horses should be watered and fed. The village well
was about 300 yards away, and the Turk evidently did not like the idea
of moving from the fire. He did not move, but argued in Turkish of
which I understood nothing. Finally I elicited the fact that the horses
were too tired to drink and too tired to eat the barley I had brought for
them. As a remedy for tiredness they were to be left without water and
food all night.
As plainly as was possible I insisted to the Turk that the horses must be
watered at once, and afterwards given a good ration of barley. I
dragged him from the fire to the horses and made my meaning clear
enough. The Turk was stubborn. Clearly either I was to water the
horses myself or they were to be left without water, and my old
traditions of horse-mastery would not allow me to have them fed