116 AFEICAN WANDEUINGb.

the Arnauts, on awaking from their debauch, found themselves outwitted, and on Mehemet AH promising them speedy payment of their arrears, they marched quietly back to their former quarters. The pay, wondrous to say, they did receive, but as surely were all, under one or other excuse, despatched into countries from which for them there was no return. The merchants ruined by the Pascha's stratagem received some millions of piastres as indemnification, but, as may be easily supposed, this sum nothing like covered their losses.

The conduct of the Arnauts from Rumelia, Albania, and elsewhere, during their time of power, is almost incredible. Not one night passed in Cairo, that a number of men were not murdered by them in the most public streets and places. Ever drunk, they wandered about the town, and more than one Frank was shot down merely because he was a Frank : but not alone did Franks suffer ; as they spared neither country, sex, or age ; every inhabitant trembled at their approach, and at the sight of their yatachans*, with which they most dexterously sliced off men's heads, as well as before the ever-loaded pistols stuck in their girdles, and never laid aside day or night, asleep or waking. They spread fear and horror around them on all sides, and were, in one word, the pest of Egypt. Never did I gaze on countenances that more strongly testified to savage passions, and eager love of blood, than those of these Arnauts ; such vile and savage faces never did I see, not even among the infuriated and wild Greeks, during their war of freedom, wlien, in the pomegranate groves of Ti jMyli (Lerna, near Argos), they roasted alive their Turkish captives. Their characters are in true keeping with their debauched and brutally savage features. Their dress and equipments perfect the horrors of their appearance ; they wear dirty ragged tarbushes dragged down low over the eyes, or carelessly hanging on one side of the head, the bull-like neck and brown breast ever bared, a jacket, always at first of a yellow colour, but now from age, holes, and dirt, colourless, and under it a gay vest of many hues ; the once wliite Albanian or Grecian shirt | with large wide sleeves, but now black or brown, as washing it never knew. This si lirt falls like a tunic over their short breeches: their leicincrs * A lonj; crooked knife, sliarpcniil on ilio inner edge.

f Fustiiiiclltv, from <pou<rrafa.