Ayesha the Maid of Kars

ensued. The vessel did not answer her helm, and rolled about most fearfully, very much to the discomfort of all on board. Who that has ever seen a company of sick Asiatics, but must confess the sight to be infinitely more deplorable than a similar exhibition of sick Europeans ! Their beards, and flowing robes, their large headdresses, and their listless habits, however picturesque they may be, are but ill-calculated for meeting the thousand ills attendant upon VOL. III. D a sea life. The Mufti presented a picture of genuine misery ; often did he sigh for the soft cushions and the comforts of his house, when, at every dip which the vessel made, he perceived the waves curling up towards him, as if they would swallow him up, turban and all. The janissaries, armed to the teeth, so full of swagger and audacity on shore, were here reduced, to make use of a sailor's simile, to the consistency of so many wet swabs. The poor Circassian slaves sighed when they thought upon the wild mountains which they had left; and we willingly draw a veil over the miseries endured by the gentle Ayesha and her intriguing mother. Mustafa was only kept from annihilation by the visions which occasionally floated in his mind, of the luxuries awaiting him at the gate of the ambassadorial residence at Constantinople, varied by reflections on post-horses and post-houses; whilst Stasso, who proved one of the stoutest and was the least incommoded of the party, only thought how he might be of ...