Soyer's Culinary Campaign: Being Historical Reminiscences of the Late War.: With The Plain Art of Cookery for Military and Civil Institutions

sex. No! it was an acknowledgment of the martial glory of the country; for, a few minutes after, the same sentiment was expressed for the Emperor of France; and again, for the union and alliance of the three nations. This proceeding, instead of opening the heart to feelings of love, and of calling forth the last sentiment of the kind which might have lingered there, aroused a sterner inspiration. Such are what I call the calamities, if not the horrors, of war; where all is destruction, and humanity is rendered inhuman. This was the prevailing feeling of about forty well-bred and brave military men--fifteen of whom were French, and the remainder Englishmen--sitting at the table-d’hôte of the “Hôtel des Ambassadeurs,” at Pera, on the 20th of March, 1854. Of that company, nearly a third, a few months after, had sacrificed their lives for the glory of their country. The next morning, at half-past eight, I went with my dragoman to the horrid Tophané landing-place. There I was surrounded by at least twenty caidjees, who added to the disagreeables of this spot an evil of which I was not aware at my first visit. Just fancy twenty Turks screaming out their to me unknown language, and performing, at the same time, a peculiar pantomime with their fists so close to your visage, you might almost fancy they were telling you that, if you dared to take any other caique than theirs, they would punch your head for you, or throw you into the Bosphorus. In such a scene of noise and confusion, it is almost, if not altogether, impossible for one to make up one’s mind whether one requires one caique or several. The mistake occurs in this, that they offer you a caique with one, two, or three caidjees. As the Bosphorus was very rough, my man hired a craft with three pair of oars--the two and three-oared boats being the only ones that went out that day--the small caiques with one pair of oars seldom venturing out in such weather. We soon stepped into the boat; and, to my