al suttlers need no other shelter than that of the
boat which contains their wares. They are always ready for a start, and
glad to be allowed to follow almost any whither in the wake of a ship. I
should think they might be rated amongst the most honest of their
compatriots, as they certainly may amongst the most hard-working and
courageous.

But no such luck had been ours, as to be assigned so pleasant an
adjournment. The longest cruise we had any of us managed to steal, was
perhaps in one of the cutters, as far as what we Englishmen persist in
calling St James's castle--a strange name for Turks to give a place, and
which, in fact, we have devisedly corrupted from their word _sandjeak_.

At last, one happy day--happy in its result, not in the complexion it
bore at its opening--we positively did receive orders for a start, and
this is the way it came about: The representative of sultanic dignity at
the somewhat retired watering-place of Adalia, was a man prone, like the
greater number of his countrymen, to judge of things altogether in the
concrete. The idea of power could by him be deduced only from present
violence; and without some such sensible manifestations, it became to
him like one of Fichte's "objects," i.e. all moonshine. With regard to
foreign powers, they existed for him, and influenced his government,
only so far as they sent occasionally a ship of war with its suggestive
influence of a frowning broadside to look in his way. They have no very
distinct idea, these gentlemen, of geography, nor of political science;
all thus are sadly out in their estimation of the relative importance of
places. To them the seat of their government is the world; or at least
the place in it of importance second to Constantinople. If they be
passed over in the distribution of our _corps de demonstration_, they
are apt to ascribe the omission to a want of power on our part. Now,
with all their excellencies, it call hardly be denied that they are
sadly apt to presume on any want of power in a neighbour. So it happens
that the unfortunate consuls who are stowed away in the obscurer
establishments, are apt to suffer from their caprice. Should it so
happen that the particular flag over whose interests the consul is
appointed inspector, should not have been displayed in the neighbourhood
lately by any ship of war, the short memory of a pasha is in danger of
forgetting that nation's claim to respect; for any thing that he knows,
it may