mrmA^

^,

HUMPHRY SANDWITH.

(From a Photograph by Messrs. Elliott & Fry.)

HUMPHRY SANDWITH
Covvpiled from Autohiogrcqjldcal JYotes,

HY Ills NErilEW,

THOMAS HUMPHRY WARD.

CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited
LONDON; PARIS .0 NEW YORK.
1884.
[all kights kesekvbd.]

PREFATORY NOTE.

.DuEiNG the last years of his life, Dr. Sandwith
occupied himself in writing a very full autobiography,
in which he incorporated the diaries that he had kept
at various times, and much interesting correspondence.
This autobiography was not intended for publication,
but, as he expressed it, for the information and amuse
ment of his children and grandchildren. " Still," he
added, " it is possible that a selection^^f rom it, containing
the passages of most general interest, may some daj^
see the light." Such a selection it has been my object
to make, and to supply the links which were . required
to form it into a continuous story. As has been said
at various points in the work, I have suppressed much
that Dr. Sandwith wrote, even on topics of such in
trinsic interest as the life of Turks and Arabs, the
preliminaries of the Crimean "VVar, and the state of
things which led to the Russo-Turkish struggle of
1S77; for on the general aspects of these matters
a whole literature is already in existence. But enough
remains to make a volume which, it is hoped, will not
be wanting in freshness ; for Dr. Sandwith's career was
varied and remarkable, and his enthusiastic and self-
devoting character was of a type that is never common.
T. H. Ward.
61, Eussell Square, London,
October, 1884.

CONTENTS.

PAaii:
CHAPTEli I. — Ckiluhoou and Youth . . 1
CHAPTEE IL— Eauly Maxhood . . .10
CHAPTER HI.— CoNSTAXTixoi-LE . . 2.'>
CHAPTER lY. — Armenia and Kurdistax . . 43
CHAPTER Y.— Mesopotamia . :>i
CHAPTER YL— CoxsTANTixoi-LE . 71>
CHAPTER YIL— DitiiTiN-G ixto War . . 9G
CHAPTER YIIL— The Daxuhe ... . US
CHAPTER IX.— Kars . . 128
CHAPTER X.— London Society . . US
CHAPTER XI.— The Embassy to Moscow . . 16S
CHxiPTER XIL— Mauritius : Marriaoe, and the East 181
CHAPTER XIII.— 1870-1876. The Fkaxco-Germax Y'ar . 2()1
CHAPTER XIV.— The Serviax War . 220
CHAPTER XY.— The Eusso-Tcrkish Y'ar, &c. . 23G
CHAPTER XYL— Last Years . . 250

Memoir OK
Humphry Saxdwith.

CHAPTER I.
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH.
Humphry Sandwith was the eldest son of Humphry
Sandwith, surgeon, and was born at Bridlington early
in the year 1822. His father belonged to a family
which had been for many generations settled at Helms-
ley, between York and Malton ; and his mother was the
daughter of a Mr. Isaac Ward, merchant and shipowner,
of Bridlington Quay. The elder Sandwith had been,
at the date of his son's birth, practising medicine for
some five years at Bridlington, and had already gained
a considerable reputation, foreshadowing that which he
was afterwards to enjoy as one of the leading physicians
in Hull. From this time till he left the town, some
twelve years afterwards, Bridlington and the neighbour
hood supplied him with as much work as he could do,
and with an income which, judged by the standard of
those days and of that remote corner of England, was
handsome. But, unfortunately for his children, he had

2 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
not the art of spending his income either to their
advantage or his own.
The irregularity of young Sandwith's education, of
which he was always conscious, was indeed the necessary
result of his father's character. The latter was a hard
working, pure-minded, and deeply religious man, but so
ignorant of the ordinary ways of the world as to be quite
unable either to struggle with circumstances himself or
to equip his children for their part in the fight. He was
an ardent Wesleyan Methodist, and his delight was, on
returning from his professional work, to sit down and
engage in some eager literary controversy in defence of
Wesley's principles or on the broader ground of " Pro
testant truth." The direct result of this taste was his
abandonment, in 1834, of his excellent Bridlington
practice, and his migration to London to become Editor
of the Waichnan newspaper, the organ of the Wes-
leyans, on £300 a year : a post for which he was in
all respects but one totally unfitted. Another result,
not less unfortunate for his children, was the want
of any system in their education. He always held in a
half-instinctive way to the idea that his son Humphry
was to be a doctor like himself ; but it never occurred
to him either to plan the boy's general education or
to find out by careful inquiry the best way in which
he might enter the profession. Accordingly, after
being tossed about at random from pedagogue to
pedagogue, and from school to school, Humphry found
himself at sixteen bound apprentice to his uncle, Dr.
Thomas Sandwith, at Beverley, and condemned to

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 3
spend the five best years of his youth in making up
prescriptions and in learning nothing at all.
Still, his years of boyhood were neither unhappy
nor altogether unprofitably spent. Under one or
another teacher in Bridlington and the neighbourhood
he picked up the elements of book-knowledge, and
formed a taste for desultory reading which in its turn
did much to foster the romantic habit of his mind. On
holidays he would wander alone, or with his favourite
sister or brother, through Boynton Woods or among the
fields near Bridlington, and cultivate to the full that
love for natural objects, that interest in birds and birds'-
nests, and in every creature that runs or crawls or flies,
that in after-life helped so much to determine his
adventurous career. One of these expeditions he has
himself recorded at full length ; it was when, at nine
years of age, he accompanied a party of farmers' lads in
a hunt for sea-fowls' eggs at Buckton Cliffs. For some
miles to the north of Plamborough Head, the cliffs
are sheer walls of chalk some five hundred feet high ;
and at certain points the ledges and clefts on their
surface are the haunts and the nesting-places of count
less sea-birds. " We Avent," says the Autobiography,
"one fine afternoon, in May I think, with a strong
N.W. wind blowing, the lads carrying ropes and
crowbars. I was delighted with the stupendous
precipices beneath my feet, the rocks being covered and
alive with thousands and tens of thousands of sea-fowl.
There were kittiwakes, guillemots, puffins, divers, gulls,
auks, and sundry other species, uttering a babel of cries

4 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
that charmed my ears. The strong wind, too, drove
some of them quite close to us, and then we pelted
them with stones. Presently the crowbars were fixed,
the ropes run out, and the climbers began their opera
tions. This was of course a most perilous task, but the
farm-boys seemed quite equal to the occasion, and in
the course of two or three hours we had collected
an enormous number of eggs of various sizes, some as
large as those of a goose, others as small as those of a
bantam. It was a giddy sight to see these lads let down
over the abyss and climbing amongst the slippery
rocks. That night we had a grand egg-feast, and I
ate so well that I never could and never did eat
another sea-bird's egg from that day to this, though I
believe that some of the smaller ones are as delicate as
plovers' eggs."
In those days, when travelling was difficult, and
when town-schools were few and bad, it was customary
for any one who lived in the country and who possessed
some smattering of letters to take a few of the neigh
bouring farmers' children and to teach them the
rudiments. Sometimes these teachers were good and
successful, but the greater number were as rough and
brutal as they were ignorant. One of yonng Sandwith's
teachers, who lived at Bempton, was of this type. He
was one James Kay, the deformed son. of a farmer ; and
under his charge Humphry Sandwith and his brother
Godfrey were placed for a few months.
. . . " We were driven over in a gig," says the
Autobiography, " and were presented first to the school-

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 5
master's mother, a kind motherly woman, and then
to the schoolmaster himself. He was a little crooked
man on crutches, the victim apparently of confirmed
scrofula. He looked at us sternly, and asserted his
authority over the two crouching imps in a manner not
to be misunderstood. We were presently introduced to
the schoolroom, a small brick -floored room, calculated to
hold seven or eight pupils, and fitted with desks, and
here we made the acquaintance of other children, the
sons and daughters of a neighbouring wealthy farmer.
We commenced our lessons, and I was put to /lic, hmc,
Jioc. I soon discovered that terrorism was the order of
the day. The schoolmaster gloried in his authority
over the children under him, and wielded his cane
unmercifully. Our school-hours were purgatorial, and
as we were boarders the hours of play were not alto
gether bereft of the terror of the cane. Mr. Kay
delighted in the effects of terror. Among the pupils
was a delicate little maiden of about seven, with fine
complexion and flaxen hair. Under the impulse of fear
she had told a fib, and Mr. Kay took the occasion of
giving her a practical religious lesson after his own
heart. He first of all in a voice of thunder laid down
the doctrine of eternal punishment — ' eternal, eternal,
for ever, yes, for ever ! ' He then took out of the fire a
live coal, and seizing the child's hand, held it near
enough to make her scream with terror and pain while
roaring into her ears his theological lesson."
All his masters, however, were not like this. There
was another, a Rev. Mr. Thompson, who seems to have

6 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
taught well, and to have left the cane in the back
ground. Then out of school-hours there were the joys
of the fields and the woods, and often on half-holidays,
or during the summer months of freedom, the straw
berry-feast and the Yorkshire farm-house tea. " During
this period of my life," he says, " I had a fair
opportunity of judging of the hospitality of the York
shire farmers; and when I compare them in this
respect with those of other countries, I am disposed to
think them the most hospitable people in the world.
As far as my experience goes, the Welsh farmers are the
least so." Then follows a description of a strawberry-
feast and the tea that followed it at old Mr. S.'s, of
Sewerby : "a tea of fried ham, and cakes sodden with
butter, and tea thick with cream, and cofEee so fragrant
and so sweet, that I think no better could have been
served at King Greorge's table  Since that
time I have been regaled in palaces and feasted with
Emperors, but never had anything so delicious, so
sumptuous as those Yorkshire teas, which were very
much in vogue in the neighbourhood of Bridlington."
At ten years old he went to Horncastle Grrammar
School, in Lincolnshire, then under his uncle the Rev.
Dr. Smith. This was a school of average efficiency, and
the time he passed there was at least pleasantly spent.
As to his progress in school -learning, he may be allowed
to speak for himself, and even in these days of improved
schools and distinguished teachers his case, it is to
be feared, will hardly sound singular : —
" My education at Horncastle was what was called

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 7
classical. We learned Latin and Greek, that is to say
we learned the grammar, the rules, the exceptions to the
rules, and a number of examples. In short, these two
dead languages were made as odious to boys as human
ingenuity could make them, and for my own part my
sou] revolted from this classical learning, and I was
considered very justly a hopeless dunce. I know I was
always at the bottom of my class, or thereabouts. But
on Saturday afternoons we had a theme given us for
English composition ; and on Monday morning, when
the themes were presented, I was invariably at the top.
The themes were occasionally varied by English verse,
and again I was at the head of my class, but when the
verses were in Latin down I sank to the bottom.
Strange to say, I passed years in studying Latin and
Greek, and could never read the simplest book in either
off-hand ; but in later years I gained a knowledge of
French, Italian, and Turkish with less difficulty than
most people. The one Latin line I really laid to heart
was Flumina amem sylvasque in(/lorius."
Soon came the family move to London, and Sand
with left Horncastle, and went for a time to King's
College School, then newly opened. The confinement,
however, told upon his health, and after awhile he
was sent back to Horncastle, to remain there until
the time came for him to be apprenticed to his uncle
at Beverley. It was in the autumn of 1838 that
this step was taken, and he remained at Beverley till

8 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
1843. These were unhappy and unprofitable years, for
his uncle, a morose man, took no pains either to teach
him his profession or to introduce him to any kind
of social life. He was sent to visit pauper patients ;
occasionally his uncle took him to see a difficult case ;
and in his hours in the surgery he read promiscuously a
number of medical books. " I read diligently," he
says, "but with absolutely no scientific foundation in
anatomy, physiology, chemistry, or pathology. Still,
I liked my profession so far, but at a certain point I
felt I could get no further; and that point I knew
was not an advanced one. I was not without what
might be termed medical courage. On one occasion a
man came into the surgery with a dislocated elbow, and
I reduced it. At another time my uncle was urgentlj'
called for, but as he was absent, I went, and found a
lady in a curious state, with her mouth open. I
diagnosed luxation of the jaw, which I had ncYcr seen,
and forthwith reduced the jaw to its natural condition."
In after-years the memory of the long apprentice
ship at Beverley was always bitter to him. He used to
say, with perfect truth, that the apprenticeship system,
in medicine more than in any other line of life, was a
lottery : that success or failure depended entirely upon
chance. Under a good master, a lad might do as well,
and learn the groundwork of his profession as thoroughly,
as in any other w^ay; under a careless or inefficient
master, he might simply waste his years. Humphry
Sandwith always looked back on his own indentures as a
]3ainf ul blunder, and on his five years as wasted. It was

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 9
characteristic of him that the bright spot in this desert
of his youth — setting aside one or two love affairs, such
as fall to the lot of most young men — was a series of
secret sporting expeditions, to which to his latest day he
used to look back with just the same delight as that
with which he recalled his most exciting adventures
among the mountains of Asia Minor or on the plains
of Mosul. He had picked up two acquaintances : " Pol,"
a large, curly, brown retriever, and the dog's master, a
bricklayer's labourer. Bob Park by name ; and with
these two friends he used to sally out on moonlight
winter nights, when the frost was keen, to look for the
wild ducks that haunted the river Hull. "Of course," he
writes, " these sporting parties were absolutely unknown
to my uncle, and the secret had to be carefully kept.
The cold,' the midnight journey to Leven Lock, five
miles off, the snow, and the secrecy, combined to give a
great charm to these expeditions. I was a thoroughly^
romantic youth, imbued with Scott's novels, and I loved
everything irregular and adventurous. In order to
harden myself, I used to sleep night after night on the
bare boards of my room, with nothing but a blanket
for my covering. On moonlight nights, after making
an appointment, I would retire to my room, and instead
of undressing to go to bed, I would undress to re-dress.
I put on as much flannel as I could manage, and then
my rough clothes. I had pockets in my sporting-coat
similar to those made for poachers ; one pocket would
hold the barrels, another the stock of my gun. Thus
equipped, I crept silently out of the house at the back

10 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
door, hurried to Bob's cottage, tapped at the window,
and off we started with Pol. In truth our game was
scanty enough. We never killed many ducks ; some
times we killed absolutely none ; but I loved the sport
intensely." Sixteen years afterwards he re-visited Beverley,
wearing the laurels of Kars. He had, as might be
expected, an enthusiastic welcome, but from none was
it so enthusiastic as from his old friend Bob Park.
"Doctor," said the warm-hearted fellow, bursting
into tears, " I always knew you'd get through your
troubles: you was so plucky after them ducks ! "

CHAPTER II.
early manhood.
When Sandwith left Beverley, he found his father
established as a physician in Albion Street, Hull. The
London experiment had not answered, and it was a wise
measure to abandon both the Watchnan newspaper
and the house in Great Ormond Street. For six months
Humphry attached himself to the small medical school
in Hull, which had a staff (chosen from the medical
men of the town) and some approach to systematic
teaching. He worked hard, rising at five throughout the winter,
and by the end of the session had at least taken a survey

EARLY 2IANH00D. 11
of the ground to be covered, and had made some way in
anatomy. Outside the study and the class-room, however, the
life he lived during those months was not very stimu
lating. It was warmed indeed by a genuine family
affection, but the tone of the household was methodistical,
and there was neither the desire on the part of the
parents nor the opportunity for much pleasant and
healthy society. " I fear," he writes thirt}^ years later,
" that we young folks were more or less hypocrites from
a natural desire to conform."
Then, describing the social and political prejudices
in which he had been nursed, he proceeds : " I used
to regard a freethinker as a man beyond the pale of
humanity. A Radical, I thought, was one that ought to
be hung. Chartism was very strong in those days ; and
I remember the horror with which I read the points
of the Charter, most of which have now been carried."
Hull certainly was not a milieu in which a young man
curiously compounded of romance, prejudice, and refined
feelings could develop satisfactorily. It was at that
time, as far as concerns all the elements of a rational
social life, about the most stagnant and backward of the
English towns. " Its leading merchants," says Sand
with, " men living in great luxury and keeping hand
some equipages, could not speak correct English ; and
this was the rule, not the exception. The whole popula
tion had at that time a character of low Philistinism
about it which was quite depressing."
It was not for long, however, that he had to bear

1-2 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
this dispiriting intellectual atmosphere. When the
medical session was over, he formed a strong wish to
spend some months abroad for the purpose of learning
French ; and it was decided that he should go to Lille,
to the house of a friend of the family, M. Marzials,
afterwards well known in London as the pastor of a
French Protestant church. Nowadays we do not
commonly attach much importance to a first visit to
France ; but in 1 844 the thing was not so common or
so easy. Sandwith always regarded this visit as one of
the turning-points in his life. It fed and stimulated his
love for the uncommon, the foreign, the adventurous.
M. Marzials had some English pupils in his house,
pleasant, well-bred lads, with whom, though a good deal
their senior, Sandwith fraternised; and together they
followed the charming Continental custom of spending
part of the short holiday in tours of discovery in the
neighbourhood. Their explorations of Flanders were
thorough and delightful. " I dwell," he writes, thirty
years later, " on this part of my life with infinite
relish." But the most characteristic of his doings was a trip
that he made alone during June and July, in the blouse
of a workman. His father had sent him for some such
purpose a present of a five-pound note — a rare event —
and he determined to see how far he could make it sro.
A letter written at the time to one of his brothers
describes this journey with all the enthusiasm of an
ardent youth, who had till now seen nothing, who had
longed to see, and to whom the towns and Yillao^es of the

EARLY MANHOOD. 13
Continent were each one of them a revelation. It is
almost incredible that he could have visited, for that
sum of money, " Tournay, Mons, Charleroi, Liege,
Aix-la-Chapelle, Cologne, Bonn, Treves, Frankfort,
Mayence, Spires, Strasburg, and Basle," and could
return with something in his pocket. But a traveller
who carries his own knapsack, who goes on foot, or in
carriers' carts, or in the forepart of a steamboat, who
consorts with pedlars, who breakfasts by the roadside off
a hunch of bread and the milk which a woman draws
from the cow for him, who sups with peasants and
sleeps in a garret where " the rats dance quadrilles over
his head," such a traveller can go long distances for
small sums : and, moreover, can extract an incredible
amount of enjoyment from his journey. It is certain
that Humphry Sandwith never forgot this knapsack
tour. It was the natural preface to his wanderings in
Mesopotamia. Soon afterwards he returned to England, and entered
as a student at University College, London. " Never
had I worked as I worked during the nine months that
preceded the London University examination ; and yet
I was determined not to lose my hold of French, which
I now could speak, though very imperfectly, and with
an atrocious accent." After some time accident threw
in his way a young fellow-student, a Frenchman from
Mauritius, one Victor Garreau. Neither of them had
many friends in London, so they formed one of those
student-partnerships which are often so delightful. It
succeeded admirably. " Luckily for me, Garreau liked

li HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
above all things to talk his native tongue. All he
wanted was a good listener ; and he was a famous
gossip. From a halting half-knowledge of French
with a bad English accent, I soon acquired a fluent
use of the language, with a far better pronuncia
tion than the majority of Englishmen possess.
. . . Garreau was a typical Frenchman, gay,
amorous, fond of good living and fine clothes. His
admiration of the beau sexe and his amours were most
amusing and characteristic. One night, at the theatre,
when we were together in the pit, I observed he was
very uneasy, and constantly looking round, smoothing
his hair and arranging his collar. ' EUe me regarde !
Sacrebleu, elle me regarde ! ' he exclaimed. He was
under the impression that a beautiful girl in the boxes
was darting amorous glances at him. With some
difficulty I discovered the young lady in question, but I
could not see that she looked once in our direction ; and
if she had, such was the distance that I should have had
an equal right to claim the glance as my own. I had
not been long living with Garreau before I was intro
duced to some six or seven young men from Mauritius.
They were deeidedly unlike English youths ; much
more noisy, courteous, affable, and gay. The eternal
subject of their discourses was woman. They were less
ceremonious, too, than Englishmen. Garreau frequently
came to my wardrobe and helped himself to a shirt
without ceremon3^ Our companions used to sit late into
the night smoking and gossiping, but never drinking ;
and then instead of going home would lie on the sofa or

EARLY MANHOOD. li
hearthrug until the morning. Occasionally a youth of
rather darker complexion would call. He was a fellow-
colonist and schoolfellow ; but there was a slight touch
of colour in his blood, and so he was treated with cold
politeness, the ' vous ' was substituted for the ' tu,'
and he was made to feel that there could be no
familiarity. Garreau and I often used to discuss our
future careers. His was tolerably secure, for his father
was a planter. Mine was more uncertain and precarious.
I used often to ask him if he thought there was an
opening for me in Mauritius. He assured me that there
was, and strongly recommended me to go there ; and I
verily believe that if it had not been for the difficulty
and expense attendant on the voyage I should have
p'one. Strang'e that I was destined for that island in
later years, but in a very different position ! "
The important thing, however, during these months,
was to prepare for the approaching examinations. The
first was the " first medical " of the London University,
which came on in July or August ; and for this, though
he worked as hard as a man can work, he had not
sufficient time. When the fatal Monday had come,
" I appeared," he says, " at Somerset House with sundry
others, amongst whom was a dark-complexioned youth
named Huxley, hereafter to be in the foremost rank
of science." Sandwith's experience of his first serious
examination ought to excite the sympathies of many a
candidate of to-day. " I did pretty well in anatomy,
moderately in chemistry, tolerably in botany, but broke
down utterly in materia medica. I was unfortunate in

16 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
regard to this so-called science. The professor, a Dr.
Pereira, was the horror of medical students. He had
written a ponderous work in two volumes which I be
lieve he called ' The Elements of Materia Medica.' It
was like a book of mediaeval divinity; a mine of worth
less learning on the origin and qualities, imaginary or
real, of every bit of rubbish that had ever been called a
drug. Amongst the questions on my paper I was
required to give the Latin name, the qualities, botanical,
medicinal, etc., of the common broom — a plant which
some cracked doctor had, in an evil hour for me, got
admitted into the 'Materia Medica.' I had at my
fingers' ends the whole chemistry of calomel and tartar
emetic, and the botany of senna and quinine ; but the
broom floored me, and in a moment of bewilderment
I wrote down ' brumus.' This so annoyed Pereira
that he unmercifully plucked me." The blow was of
course a severe one ; but the victim took it in good part,
and another year's steady work saw him safe through
his troubles. In the autumn of 1846 he passed both
the London University and the College of Surgeons,
and was qualified to practise.
He returned to Hull, and set about looking for an
opening. But his hard work had affected his health.
Early in the winter a slight accident to his knee — he
had sprained it while snipe-shooting on the Lincolnshire
bank of the Humber — disabled him. Presently violent
inflammation set in ; and it was seen that he was
seriously ill. For many weeks he lay in a critical state;
but fortunately a relative, Mr. Thomas Ward, a Hull

EARLY MANHOOD. 17
shipowner, offered him a voyage to the Mediterranean
in a vessel bound for the Levant. " The prospect of
this so charmed me," he characteristically says, " that I
felt already better." In a few days all preparations were
made ; a gun was borrowed on the chance of sport on
those unknown shores ; the faithful Pol, the friend of
old Beverley days, was promised a berth; and he was
carried down and put on board the Atwick, a small
barque of 300 tons. It was the time of the great Irish
famine, and that, together with the recent repeal of the
duty on foreign corn, had so stimulated the demand that
it was a common thing for ships to go " seeking " as it
was called ; that is, to sail for this or that port on the
chance of securing a cargo of corn at a cheap rate.
The Atwick was to call first at Malta, and there find
which of the Levantine ports would best suit for this
purpose. Humphry Sandwith's description of the
voyage is what might have been expected: he delighted
in the breezes of the North Sea, in the " mountain waves
off Trafalgar, with the solan geese plunging from great
heights into the ocean, and the Mother Carey's chickens
scudding before the vessel;" he basked in the Medi
terranean sunlight, which soon completed his cure ; he
revelled in the blue waters of Yaletta harbour, in the
tall houses, the clean streets, the white dresses and
dark complexions of the lithe and active Maltese.
Presently the ship sailed eastward again, and after
passing through the Archipelago — or " the Arches," as
the captain called it — arrived in due time at Smyrna.
It was his first glimpse of "the East" — of that East

18 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
to which through all his life from this moment he looked
with passionate attachment as to a second fatherland.
This sight of Smyrna was but momentary ; it was the
affair of a few days, of one or two hunting expeditions,
visits to native houses, and so forth ; yet when, two
years afterwards, the opportunity offered of going to
settle at Constantinople, the pleasant memory of the
Smyrna adventure played no small part in his de
cision. The homeward voyage lasted no less than three
months ; and at last Sandwith returned to Hull to begin
his search for work. He thought seriously of the
services, but no appointment was forthcoming ; nor was
there any immediate opening for private practice in the
quarters to which he first looked. Soon an opportunity
was found, though it was as far removed as possible
from the work that an adventurous young man would
have chosen. If there is one career more regular, more
uneventful than another, it is that of the house surgeon
to a provincial infirmary; and if an infirmary could
have been found more routiiiier, more provincial than
all others, it would have been the Hull Infirmary in
1847. Yet, Sandwith was justly anxious to take any
work that offered ; and on the death of the holder of
this place, an old gentleman who had served for forty
years without ambition beyond that of board, lodging,
and a hundred a year, he came forward as a candidate.
He had to canvass the subscribers, and thus tells the
story : " The Hull people were then like the rest of the
commercial classes throughout England, of little or no

EARLY MANHOOD. 19
culture. Their virtues were shrevv'd sense, mercantile
honour — they were at least highly honourable as
compared with the same class in less civilised states —
and great enterprise and energy. On the other hand,
they were for the most part vulgar, and had a grovelling
admiration for aristocracy, however pinchbeck it might
be. My canvass was amusing, and on the whole agree
able. Some of the subscribers were polite, some put on
an ungraceful air of importance, as indicating that they
had something to give or withhold — a vote. A few Avere
scarcely civil. I had of course rivals. One or more had
far better testimonials than I ; but as these men were
strangers to the town, they had as much chance of the
Crown of England as of the house surgeonship of the
Hull Infirmary. The local candidates had, I believe, as
good testimonials as myself; but their social position
was not so good. Their parents were humble people
— small tradesmen, etc. When the day of voting came,
numbers of the " county people " came to Hull, expressly
to vote for me ; and this being known, the Hull people
who wished to be genteel could not do otherwise than
follow in their wake. I was elected by more than two
to one over the next candidate."
Once appointed, he put bravely aside all thoughts
of foreign adventure, and set himself in a manly fashion
to do the important work before him. He had a
curiously varied staff of physicians and surgeons over
him; some expert and scientific, some quite incom
petent, some fairly practical doctors, but with very
little scientific knowledge. There was Dr. W., a young

20 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
man, " qualified to take the highest place in his pro
fession ; well trained, well read, and extremely able."
There was Dr. C, from London, painstaking and
successful, with adequate scientific training. There
was Dr. H., " defective in diagnosis, and altogether
below par ; in short, a man whose patients were to be
pitied" — and with whose prescriptions the young house
surgeon confesses that he took great liberties. There
was Mr. X., " a striking instance of how a man utterly
unqualified for the profession of medicine, and indeed
for any profession, can yet earn his living." And
Mr. T., "a good surgeon, but the most officiously
vulgar man it was possible to meet." Sandwith worked
hard, and kept his eyes open. Unluckily it was only
for a very few months that he was able to continue at
work. It happened in Hull at that time, as in all the
other large towns of England, that a number of famine-
stricken Irish had crowded in, and had brought with
them typhus fever in its worst form. Poor creatures
suffering from this frightful disease were constantly
being brought into the infirmary, carrying the infection
among the nurses and the staff. " I was much in
terested in this fever," says the autobiography, " and I
determuied to study it thoroughly. I used to visit each
patient frequently, taking no sort of precaution ; and I
even turned them over in their beds, applying my ear
to their chests to listen to the bronchial and pulmonary
sounds." At the end of June, five months after his
appointment as house surgeon, the fever struck him.
In a few days he was terribly ill, and for weeks he lay

EARLY MANHOOD. 21
between life and death. " I sincerely hope you may
recover," said Dr. Simpson, the celebrated York phy
sician, who came to see him early in his illness. "'Hope
you may recover ! ' The words sounded ominously," he
writes, "for they were uttered in a solemn tone that
struck a chill to my heart. So I am in danger ?
thought I ; of course I am ; for I have evidently the
same fever that the nurse died of a few days ago. And
so thinking I sank off into a doze, and was once more
on the hills of Asia Minor shooting wild boar ; and
anon I was at Lille, and I babbled in French, while my
patient mother applied a cold lotion to my burning
brow, and suppressed a sob that choked her."
He escaped very narrowly, but youth and a good
constitution saved him. After awhile he went to
Bridlington to recruit ; and then in due time returned
to his duties. But bad symptoms came on again ; and
again, after a fresh absence, they appeared. It was
obvious that the air of the hospital was poison to him,
and he had no choice but to resign. The question of
what to do for a livelihood came back with redoubled
force. Hull was impossible; he had an invincible
dislike to the town, and his father's practice was not
large enough for two. He tried for posts elsewhere,
especially for that of surgeon to Marlborough College,
then newly founded ; and at last he took a bold plunge,
came to London, took rooms in Islington, Avhere his
father had been fairly well known, and waited, with a
brass plate on his door, till patients should choose to
come. Not a single patient appeared. Matters became

22 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
desperate ; for however strict his economy — and no
Scotch student in Glasgow or Edinburgh ever pinched
and denied himself more rigorously than did the young
surgeon — it was necessary to write from time to time
to his father for the means to live. Meantime he kept
looking about him, and making friends, especially
among young foreigners. " I had still," he writes,
" quite a passion for foreign countries. I kept up my
French and Italian, and began to learn German, still
pursuing my medical studies. I cultivated the acquaint
ance of foreigners wherever I could find them, and my
first question to all who came from remote parts of the
world was, ' Is there a field for an English doctor in
your native country ? '" At last he chanced to call on
a distant cousin, Edward Brown, who had just returned
from Constantinople, and put the same question to him.
The answer was so encouraging that he at once made
up his mind to go to Constantinople, if he could get the
means and his father's consent. It was a large " if " ;
for money was very scanty, and Dr. Sandwith had
made no secret of his nervous and almost inexpugnable
dislike to the thought of a foreign career for his
favourite son. But the difficulty was unexpectedly
removed. " On the third of January, 1849," Humphry
Sandwith writes, " I was startled, and I think slightly
shocked, on receiving a letter from my father containing
£3 for my immediate wants, and the advice that I
should go to Constantinople. I had really never con
templated this. I should as soon have expected his
advising me to commit suicide. I almost felt as if I

EARLY MANHOOD. 23
had not been fairly treated in being taken at my word.
I sat down and reflected. Would it be really well for
me to go to Constantinople — so far, so out of the reach
of all friends; of all help ? But I soon dismissed these
cowardly thoughts ; my spirits rose to the occasion, and
I wrote off a calm and affectionate letter to my father,
telling him of all my plans, and thanking him for his
sanction to my cherished scheme.
" And now what was next to be done ? I was
fortunately in London, the place of all others for
collecting information about everything; and so I began
to go about telling people I was going to practise at
Constantinople, and asking for letters of introduction.
The first remark was invariably, ' Oh, I suppose you
have got an appointment there ? ' When I answered
' No,' some shook their heads ominously ; others said
that my enterprise was plucky, and that I deserved
success, and should obtain it. Amongst these last were
General Sandwith and Colonel Bentham Sandwith — •
officers of the Indian army, and distant cousins of mine
— who were my kindest and best friends at this juncture
of my life."
Yarious people offered him letters, or introduced
him to friends who had relations with the East.
" Some one," he writes, " introduced me to an active
and intelligent old gentleman, a Mr. Blanchard, who
lived in Great Ormond Street. Before he consented to
give me a letter to any one he asked me to dinner, to
judge for himself as to whether I was worthy of it. I
went, met a pleasant party, passed my social examina-

24 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
tion, and was presented with a letter to the famous
Mr. Layard, whose discoveries at Nineveh were at that
time creating an immense sensation." Another and still
more important letter was given him, after a similar
test had been applied, by Sir Robert Inglis, the Tory
Member for Oxford University, to Sir Stratford Can
ning. Only one more step was necessary before he should
take his departure. It was rightly thought that the
title of " Doctor " was essential to success at Con
stantinople ; and after comparison of possible methods
of gaining the degree, he determined to apply, as was
then possible and regular, to the University of Aberdeen.
The examination was fairly severe ; but he passed it
easily, and became a full and lawful M.D.
At last came the moment of farewell. The funds
had been provided — £50 by his father, and £50 by
General Sandwith — and nothing now need delay his
departure. It may be imagined that the parting was
intensely painful ; for the tie of affection that bound
the Sandwith family together was very strong, and the
uncertainty of the lot to which he was condemning
himself was distressingly great. But the last fare
wells were said, the last embrace given, and he started
for London. That evening, in obedience to a habit of
his which was strong at this time, he searched for
a text of the Bible to enter in his diary; and he entered
the verse, " He that now goeth forth on his way
weeping, and bearing forth good seed, shall doubtless
come again with joy and bring his sheaves with him."

25
CHAPTER III.
CONSTANTINOPLE.
It was on the 28th of February, 1849, that Humphry
Sandvdth left London for the East. The weather was
bitterly cold ; the Channel was tempestuous ; the third-
class carriages in which he crossed the Continent made
the journey itself a terrible penance. Still he had youth
and courage, and did not flinch. He passed Berlin,
Breslau, and Yienna, where the streets were still pock
marked with musket-balls from the flerce revolutionary
struggle that had been raging a few months before.
At Trieste he examined his resources, and found that
he had just £90 to begin the world upon. " The
question — the anxious question with me," he writes,
"was, Can I earn my living without further assistance
from my father ? I may so far anticipate as to say that
I never asked or received another penny from him, but,
thank God, was able to assist him in my turn."
Unable to gratify his wish to see Venice, which was
then being blockaded by the Austrians, and defended by
the illustrious Daniel Manin, he embarked on March 12
in the steamer for Constantinople, which, having
touched at Syra and Smyrna, anchored on March 23
in the Golden Horn.
There is no need to dwell upon the first impressions
made on Sandwith's mind by the sight of Constanti
nople, for they differed in no respect, except perhaps in
degree, from the impressions made upon every Prankish

26 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
traveller who first approaches that unrivalled city. He
settled himself in an unpretending hotel, and, under the
stress of the emotions of hope and fear which were
excited by the new and strange scenes among which he
found himself, he set about taking measures for begin
ning a career. His letters to the British Embassy were
invaluable. Layard especially was prompt in acknow
ledging the note, and at once called on Sandwith and
asked him to breakfast. At Layard's rooms he met
most of the staff of the Embassy ; especially Alison, the
Oriental Secretary, and a young man, Mr. Thomas
Fiott Hughes, a student-interpreter ; the former a man
of the highest ability, who ultimately became Her
Majesty's Minister at Teheran, and who, according to
Sandwith, if he had been a little more tender to social
prejudices and conventions, would almost certainly have
been Her Majesty's Ambassador at Constantinople. On
the same day came his first interview with Sir Stratford
Canning, which may be described in his own words : —
" Immediately after church I found one of the lacqueys,
and, giving him my card, said I desired to see the
Ambassador. After a short delay I was conducted into
his Excellency's room. I found myself standing in the
presence of a remarkably handsome, refined-looking
man, an unmistakable English gentleman, of about
sixty, hale and vigorous as a man could be. He was
standing with his back to the fire, posed with the
obvious intention of producing an effect and overawing
the young doctor. Had I been anything but a young
doctor, anxious to conciliate, I should probably have

CONSTANTINOPLE. 27
taken a pleasure in checkmating this game ; as it was, I
took my cue, gravely bowed in answer to his very cold
and stately nod, and remained standing. After a very
decided pause, his Excellency deigned to seat himself,
bidding me to take a chair. We then entered into conver
sation ; he asked me what I had seen in passing through
Austria, showed decided sympathy with Hungary, and
then said he thought there was a very good field in
Constantinople for a doctor. The interview then termi
nated. I afterwards saw a great deal of Sir Stratford
Canning, but my impression of him, gained at this
interview, never changed. I thought him then proud,
cold, and self-absorbed ; and my further experience of
him showed him in precisely the same character; while
on his public side, with all his vast diplomatic ability, I
found him unable to conceive any large or liberal views
of politics or anything else.
" I went home and wrote a long letter to my father
— a letter full of confidence and hope — and which,
doubtless, gave great joy in Albion Street."
The Ambassador continued to be kind to him in
his cold and impassive way, and Lady Canning was,
from the first moment, extremely friendly. He made
acquaintance with all the entoiirage, including the
physician to the Embassy, and his subordinate, who
was in charge of the British Seamen's Hospital, then
in a state which was not creditable either to the doctors
or to the Ambassador and Consul-General.
The senior doctor he liked, though he was amused
by the weaknesses and affectations of the old gentleman.

28 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
whom Sir Stratford Canning used to employ as a retailer
of gossip, and who thus preferred to be considered a
diplomatist rather than a doctor. From the substitute,
who saw a possible rival in him, he received the advice
to go and set up at Makrokeni, where was a colony of
British workmen ; but though a modest living would
have been within his reach there, he did not relish
the prospect, and preferred to remain at head-quarters.
He very soon, in fact, came to see that his own chances
of becoming in a short time physician to the Embassy
were by no means bad.
His chief friend in these early days, and during
after-years, was the Mr. Hughes whom he had met at
Layard's table. The two young men formed one of
those " friendships at first sight " which are among the
brightest experiences of youth ; and it was of lifelong
duration. During many an hour of depression Hughes's
kindness and affection were Sandwith's chief support.
Hughes, with some other men, of whom George
Smythe, afterwards Lord Strangford, was one, belonged to
the body of student-interpreters which Lord Palmerston
had recently established with a view of substituting
trained English gentlemen for the hereditary dragomans -
of the Embassy. The old system, in the hands of the
Pisani family, worked badly, and gave room for much
corruption. But either the Ambassador had not been
consulted, or he did not approve of Lord Palmerston's
scheme. "At all events," says Sandwith, "he took care
to spoil it, so he employed these j'^oung men in copying
despatches, and never in any dragoman-work."

CONSTANTINOPLE. 29
In the society of these young members of the
Embassy, Sandwith spent much of his time during his
first spring and summer in Constantinople. But mean
while he was diligently trying to push his way in his
profession, and to make friends with the doctors of all
nationalities, and of all degrees of qualification or non
qualification, with whom Constantinople abounded.
Among these were Dr. Millingen, the well-known com
panion of Lord Byron, about whose character and last
illness he had many anecdotes to tell Sandwith that
differed a good deal from the printed accounts. Another
was a Turk, one Mehemet Effendi, with whom he made an
arrangement for exchanging English lessons for Turkish ;
and as he was in earnest, while the Turk was not, this
plan answered so well that in a very short time he was
able to speak the language fluently. His English letters
of introduction had gained him a good many acquaint
ances, and when the time came he proceeded to deliver
those addressed to natives, the results being of a kind
of which the following extract gives fair examples : —
" I engaged a guide to help me in discovering the
dwelling-places and counting-houses of these people.
After descending the rugged, tortuous lanes of Galata,
we found ourselves in a rather better street than usual,
one side of which was entirely occupied by commercial
offices. I was now shown into the gloomy counting-
house of Signor X., a Jew millionnaire. I believe the
origin of his wealth was a disreputable house kept by
his father or grandfather. He was now, however, one
of the elite of Constantinople.

30 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
" I found him a venerable man, with a kindly face
and grey beard. When I entered he was giving
audience to some Jews, with whom he was chatting in
Spanish, but on my presenting myself he rose and
received me in the kindest manner, and offered me the
most brilliant prospects of success, begging me to
command him in every way, and to render him happy
by showing him how lie could serve me.
" From him I adjourned to a Greek counting-house,
and was regaled with a cup of coffee and some superla
tive phrases on the pleasure M. Papadaki had in making
my acquaintance, which he hoped would ripen into
intimacy. He concluded by consulting me on the state
of his health, and got me to write a prescription and a
series of rules as to diet and exercise, and then, vnth
vague promises of recommendations to distinguished
friends, he bade me adieu, chuckling at having ' sold '
or laughed at {eyeXaae) the Frank dog. I need go no
further into details ; suffice it to say that I concluded
a very fatiguing day by delivering the last of my letters,
and I threw myself exhausted on my sofa, feeling that
the most brilliant prospects were now open to me. I
knew that most of these great bankers were intimate
with the Sultan's Ministers, not to speak of their own
large circle of friends and relatives, and the weight of
their recommendation to these latter, so I built up
castles in the air of the most florid architecture. I
may anticipate so far as to say that not one of these
Levantine gentlemen ever showed me the slightest
attention. I was never asked to cross their thresholds.

CONSTANTINOPLE. 31
nor to break bread vdth them, nor did they ever send
me a patient."
Another new acquaintance was a Mr. Seput, an
Armenian apothecary, in whose shop, according to the
custom of the place, Sandwith spent a good deal of
time, making himself familiar with the manners of
both doctors and patients, and taking his chance of
finding a few sick folk who might wish for his help.
His own description of the scenes which passed in
this " second-rate Italian pharmacy," as he calls Mr.
Seput's shop, gives a clear picture of the manner in
which he spent this part of his second apprenticeship.
" Benches were arranged on each side of the pharmacy
of Mr. Seput, and on these were seated daily a number
of the faculty, amongst whom the English Hekim Basliy
was at one time frequently to be seen, learning the
languages of the country rather than practising his
profession. Early in the morning Mr. Seput would
arrive and salute whatever guests happened to be
present — ' Signor dottore, come sta ? ' being ever the
first announcement of his arrival. There were various
studies in this pharmacy besides that of materia medica,
and by no means the least interesting were the queer
specimens of my profession that I now associated with.
One old gentleman, a very steady attendant there, I
early made acquaintance with, on the strength of his
being an Englishman. His name was Brown, which
was his only national characteristic. His language was
that of Constantinople, or rather his languages were
those of Constantinople — namely, bad Romaic, bad

32 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
French, bad Italian, and bad Turkish. It would have
been difficult to say which of these he spoke the
best, or rather the worst. His ancestors had been
British traders, and he was too proud of being a civis
Bomanus and enjoying the privileges it gives, especially
in Turkey, ever to forget his origin. He had been
brought up a watchmaker, which trade he had followed
for many years, but having by an untoward accident
lost the use of his forefinger, he took to the practice of
medicine. Now in England it is a point of etiquette
for a physician to hold no intercourse with a practitioner
who has no diploma, or qualification, as it is technically
called. In Constantinople this rule could not be fol
lowed or you would never be called in to a consultation,
since the majority of doctors there in my time were
unqualified. I was curious to know the style of practice
this old man followed, and I had in process of time
ample opportunity of learning it and that of many
others who had no better pretensions to the style of
doctor. While I am conversing with Dottore Brown,
a fat old Turkish lady comes into the shop, followed by
a negro girl, both being enveloped in the cloak oxferigi,
and having their faces covered with the yashmak.
" ' Hani hekim bashi ? " she asks, " where is the
doctor ? '
" ' Here I am, Khamim Effendi, bouyoroun, at your
service,' exclaims Dr. Brown.
" The old lady sits heavily down on the bench, sighs
deeply, and fans herself with her pocket-handkerchief.
" ' Vai vai, aman aman, feel my pulse, hekim bashy.'

CONSTANTINOPLE. 33
" Dr. B. immediately feels her pulse, looks pro
foundly wise, and says, ' Ah, you have had a fright.'
" ' A fright — yah, that I have, aman ; what shall
Ido?' " Doctor : ' Let us see ; show me your tongue ' (she
raises her yashmak and protrudes that feminine weapon).
' Ah, there is nothing the matter with your tongue.
Your head is clear, eh? '
" Lady : ' My head clear ? what do you say, you ass
of a doctor ! my head is all topsy-turvy — whiz, whiz,
whiz — that's what it's like. Shall I let blood ? '
" Doctor : ' Well, well, Khanum Effendi, I have
understood it all now ; the remedy is clear. Now then,
look at me. First let blood, a hundred drachms from
the foot ; put your feet in hot salt water, fasting ; eat
nothing but rice-soup ; and take a finyan [cup] full of
this medicine three times a day. There, you will soon
be well.' " And now a number of questions follow, for the old
lady is as fond of having a chat with a doctor as any
of her sisters in England or elsewhere. She makes him
feel the pulse of her slave, and give a medical opinion
on her state of health. Lastly, the doctor writes out a
prescription, which consists of some harmless infusion,
having a medicinal colour, smell, and taste, and the
old lady then takes out her purse to pay the fee, which
is, in truth, very moderate ; but she pays more than the
value of the medicine (and the doctor receives a certain
percentage out of that too). For my own part, when I
prescribed- thus for patients, I had a certain English

34 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
pride about taking a paltry fee, and so, as I gave my
advice gratis, it was very naturally thought to be worth
no more than I charged for it, and thus these pharmacy
patients never returned to me."
At the same time, he did not let pass any opportu
nity of shooting at high game. The Galata Imperial
School of Medicine, founded by Sultan Mahmoud after
his destruction of the Janissaries, for the purpose of
supplying trained doctors to his newly-organised army,
was at this time in a state of tolerable efficiency. It
had passed through many vicissitudes, but two at least
of its directors — Dr. Bernard, of Yienna, and his suc
cessor. Dr. Spitzer — had been remarkable men. With
one of the professors, Mr. Callaja, Sandwith formed an
intimacy, and by his advice went to pay a solemn visit
to the great official who bore by right the title which
has gradually come to be assigned to every doctor in
Turkey — the title of Hekim Bashy, or chief physician.
This person, who held the rank of a Minister, and who
had the official regulation of the medical affairs of the
Turkish Empire, lived in a beautiful house on the
Bosphorus, with a vast garden rising to the hills
behind, from which might be enjoyed a view as
enchanting as any which that fair region can boast.
To this place Sandwith and the professor took their
way, and, after the usual delay, were ushered into the
presence of Izzet Effendi, Chief Physician of the
Empire. He thus describes the scene : — " A venerable
old Turk, wearing a fez, but with the loose dress of the
old school, was seated, Turkish fashion, on a sofa. He

CONSTANTINOPLE. 35
did not rise, but blandly welcomed us. My companion
ran up to him and kissed the hem of his garment before
he took his seat. I, of course, contented myself with
a European bow. I was then formally presented to
his Excellency, my friend explaining to him that I was
a bond fide professor of the science of medicine, in proof
of which I had a diploma to show him.
" I accordingly presented to him the vellum, which
he took from my hands, examined with the knowing air
of a monkey, exclaimed, ' Pekee guzel, Mashallah ! ' and
then having satisfied himself apparently of its authen
ticity, he returned it. Had I presented the diploma
of the Ancient Order of Foresters it would doubtless
have served the same purpose. His Excellency then
asked me if I would take service with the Govern
ment, on which I told him I would do so with pleasure,
provided I were not sent out of the capital. He told me
he would bear me in mind, and appoint me the moment
a vacancy occurred. After smoking a jewelled pipe and
drinking a cup of coffee, we rose and took leave, and as
I stepped into our caique I felt satisfied that this was
one of my luckiest visits, as I should at once enter upon
a lucrative appointment. I had afterwards to learn that
words are cheaper in Constantinople than in England,
and had I asked the Hekim Bashy to make me his
vekeel or lieutenant he would at once have promised me
the place. 'But with £8,000 a year, your Excellency;
I cannot accept less.' ' Hai, hai — certainly,' would
have been his answer. ' And perhaps you would appoint
me to-day, as I am anxious to set to work and reform

36 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
the Medical Department.' ' Ta?-en bakalum,' would
then have been the answer, which means, ' We will see
about it to-morrow : ' and this, be it observed, is a
stereotyped phrase in Turkey."
The reception by the Hekim Bashy gives Sandwith
the opportunity for some remarks on Turkish etiquette,
and the relations between Turks and Christians, which
may even now, after the full discussion of these topics
to which we were accustomed in the years 1876-8, be
read with interest. Except as regards a few points,
they are not antiquated. After noticing the curious
analogy between the position of the Sultan and that
of the Eastern Emperors as Gibbon describes them, he
proceeds : —
" Like all Oriental nations, the Turks have a most
complicated set of rules for correspondence. Thus a
colonel has after his title certain high-sounding ad
jectives, such as illustrious, of elevated rank, etc. A
brigadier-general has comparatively higher epithets
bestowed on him, until, ascending from a Ferik to a
Mushir, we come to the most superlative titles which
follow the word Pasha. Now it is a point of honour
with the Turk to keep these titles to himself and his
own nation, as beings of a superior race to the outer
barbarians. The Sultan is Padishah joar excellence, no
one else being worthy of that title. It is true that
France, Austria, and even Portugal have insisted on this
word being used in all official documents, but this
privilege has been reluctantly accorded. A Christian,
whether Frank or native, is seldom addressed as Effendi ;

CONSTANTINOPLE. 37
he is called Captan, Chorbajee, or Tchelebi. Effendi is
reserved for the Mussulman. The contempt in which
Christians are held is carefuUy cherished throughout
Mussulman society. If a Christian archbishop were td
enter the house of a Turkish scrivener, the latter would
not rise to receive him, but in a condescending manner
invite him to a seat. If a Turkish gentleman calls,
the scribe would rise to do him honour. When Franks
are in intercourse with Turks, they are obliged or not,
according to circumstances, to put up with numerous
overt acts of impertinence of this kind. If the Frank
be in an official position, and sees any tangible imperti
nence and resents it, the proud Osmanli becomes as
cringing as he can desire. Some time ago an official
friend of mine, Alison, was sent by the British
Ambassador to a small town in the interior, to inquire
into an act of atrocious barbarity committed towards
certain Christians. Some time after his arrival at the
town, the Mudir or chief man called upon him when he
happened to be a short distance from the house. When
his visit was announced, the English gentleman at once
proceeded to his rooms to receive his guest. He found
the latter personage seated in his room smoking his pipe,
with his slipshod shabby pipe-bearers standing before
him. He made no effort to rise, but with the most
insulting condescension pointed to a seat. With ad
mirable presence of mind my friend, not appearing to
notice the man, walked on towards another room, the
servants meantime whispering, ' The Mudir, the Mudir ;
this is he.' On reaching a farther room my friend seated

38 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
himself on the divan with the grand air of an Osmanli,
exclaii^ing, ' Where is the Mudir ? ' 'In the other
room,' answered the servant ; 'you passed him.' 'Let
him come in,' was the lordly answer. The Mudir, on
being summoned, appeared, and was received with the
lofty condescension of a pasha towards a rayah, my
friend, of course, keeping his seat and beckoning to a
chair. The whole man was at once changed ; he was
in a manner degraded before his servants ; he cringed,
fawned, and finally departed like a whipped dog."
Sandwith lodged, during this time, in some cheerful
rooms near the theatre, his landlady being a Levantine
of Italian descent, who made him comfortable and en
couraged him in his struggles. She had a daughter, a
girl of seventeen, whose extraordinary beauty might
have made a fatal impression on the heart of the young
doctor, had he not had the opportunity of seeing her in
the morning, as well as later in the day. " I had been
accustomed," he says, "to see the fair nymphs of
England more fascinating, perhaps, in a morning, fresh
and wholesome from their couches, like dewy rosebuds,
than when dressed in evening toilets. I constantly met
the pretty Adelina about 10 or 11 a.m., strolling
slipshod about the house, with her nightcap, none of
the cleanest, dropping off, and showing her hair
untouched by comb or brush, and her morning gown
very ragged. In this guise she would call for her
coffee, and abuse the servant in no measured terms if it
were not quickly forthcoming. She would then seat
herself at the piano, and play some tunes in the style of

CONSTANTINOPLE. S&
a child of ten years old." Thus he providentially kept
himself heart-whole, and was able to enjoy the
Levantine and Armenian society into which his land
lady introduced him just as thoroughly as he enjoyed
the friendly circle at the Embassy. He was always, in
fact, intensely sociable, and, as has been seen, his love
for new and foreign types was just as keen as his affec
tion for those of his countrymen with whom he felt
really in sympathy. He saw much, for example, of the
Greeks in Constantinople, and his remarks about that
nation are perhaps worth quoting even now, if only
because the experience of the last thirty years has
abundantly confirmed them, and |^has sho-wn that, what
ever may be the political future of the Levant, there is
no doubt whatever about the commercial capacities of
the principal race which inhabits it.
"It is well known with what zeal, industry, and
thrift a Greek merchant works out his fortune. In
Constantinople nothing can withstand him. A youth,
the cousin ten times removed of Kyrios Xanthopulos,
enters his counting-house and serves his master
zealously for several years, until he begins in a small
way on his own account. He changes perhaps £20 into
paper money when the latter is at a discount, and re-
changes it when at a premium. He speculates care
fully at first, then more boldly, and conducts with skill
and subtlety some great plan for cheating the custom
house, receiving handsome presents from his employer
and the corrupt Turkish official. Thus he goes on,
living on bread and olives, until he is rich enough to

40 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
strike out some new branch of trade, in some untried
field, where he is backed and supported by his old
master. Greeks hang together wonderfully, and you
consequently seldom hear of the failure of one of their
houses. They are sturdily honest in Manchester, where
their word is their bond, for such is the best policy, and
there they have a wholesome dread of English justice.
The same men are lying knaves in Constantinople, for
trickery is apparently the best policy there. They have
the most wonderful means of transmitting intelligence.
How many fortunes were made at the commencement
of the Crimean war by the early and correct telegraphic
information they were able to command ! The declara
tion of war was known by some Greek houses in Con
stantinople long before it had reached the Embassy.
These Greeks are the very soul of unscrupulous trade ;
they have driven our merchants out of the Levantine
waters." As regards his relations with the Embassy, the
following characteristic extract will show how pleasant
they were, and to what interruptions they were occa
sionally subject by reason of Sir Stratford Canning's
difficult temper.
" During these six months of the spring and sum
mer of 1849, my residence in Constantinople, varied
by incessant visits to Therapia, was charming. I had
far more friends here than I ever had at Beverley, Hull,
or London ; and then they were such jolly good fellows,
most of them. My society was, in short, as good as I
could have had in the very best circles of London, with

CONSTANTINOPLE. 41
more variety ; for in addition to the clever and witty
Englishmen at the Embassy, there were Russians,
Austrians, and other Continentals, equally polished and
intelligent. I was a frequent visitor at Therapia,
that charming summer residence to which the Embassy
had removed. These visits were sometimes to Layard,
sometimes to Alison or Hughes ; they appeared always
glad to see me, and the latter, now become most anxious
for my success, never failed to tell me to call upon Lady
Canning. I was shy in doing so, but deferred to his
opinion and called. She frequently asked me to dinner,
.and I considered myself bound to accept the invitation.
" This sort of thing went on for some weeks, I dining
perhaps once a week with the Embassy ; meantime,
unknown to me. Sir Stratford Canning was becoming
annoyed by my too frequent appearance at his table,
.and his feelings were at last discovered by an accident.
"I had dined there one evening, and slept in Hughes'
sitting-room. I stayed on the following morning, and
did not depart until about three in the afternoon. Just
as I was stepping into a caique, a messenger from the
Embassy recalled me, saying one of the servants was ill.
I dismissed the caique and went to see the man, who
was suffering from vomiting and purging. While I
was prescribing for him I was sent for to another, and
then to another, equally suffering in the same way, until
I had about half a dozen on my hands. I was fully
occupied all the afternoon attending to these cases, and
felt very happy in being thus usefully employed. In
the evening I had a summons to the Ambassador. I

42 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
found him in his study. He received me most frigidly ,^
told me he had sent for the physician of the Embassy ;
meantime he requested to know what his servants ailed.
I equally coldly told what I thought of their cases, and
after a very little conversation departed. Short as this
interview was, he contrived to wound me to the quick.
I was in a rage, and went fuming to Hughes and then
to Layard. These both laughed, and remarked that I
had at last run against the Eitchie, and that ' it was so
like him.' I answered with dignity that it was all very
well for subordinates in the Embassy to put up wdth his
insolence, but that as I was an independent gentleman
I certainly should do nothing of the sort ; and so I
sulked aU the rest of the day. Meantime Layard went
to Lady Canning and told her that the Ambassador
had hurt my feelings by his unaccountably rough
manner, and that I was quite at a loss to know the-
meaning of it. He explained to me, however, how it
all came about. He told me that I had dined too often
at the Embassy, and that Hughes, having conceived
a sort of enthusiasm for me, was always mentioning
my name, and ' thrusting me down their throats.'
' Good heavens ! ' I exclaimed, ' then were Lady
Canning's invitations not to be accepted? Why on
earth did she give them ? '
"On the following morning I was again sent for
by the Ambassador. He was in his study, and instead
of entering with a smile as I did the day before, I gave ¦
him the coldest and most formal bow I could make.
He was, on the contrary, as gracious as possible, and.

ARMENIA AND KURDISTAN. 43
SO all clouds were soon dispelled. We chatted very
agreeably ; in everything but words he apologised, and
when I rose to go he put a substantial fee into my
hand. " This was almost my last interview with him for
more than a year, for another phase of my life was
opening upon me. Layard had prevailed on me to
accompany him to Nineveh, and so I began to make
my preparations."

CHAPTER IV.
ARMENIA AND KURDISTAN.
The journey from Constantinople to Mosul, which was
undertaken by Mr, Layard's party, has been described
at some length by Mr. Layard himself in the account of
his second expedition to Nineveh. To print the whole of
Dr. Sandwith's description would therefore be to repeat
much of what has been already published. But the
accounts differ so widely in their points of view that it
is not desirable to force what Dr. Sandwith has to say
into very small compass. The Chief of the Expedition
and his Hekim Bashy were entirely different men, and
saw things with different eyes. Layard was an expe
rienced traveller, already a cool politician, and above
all a skilled antiquarian. Sandwith was young, roman
tic, carried away by the novelty of the scenes through

44 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
which he was passing, a keen sportsman, ignorant of
Oriental antiquities, and as yet little given to political
reflection. This journey was a central event in his life.
The year among the Armenian mountains and in the
deserts stamped itself so vividly upon his memory, that
in after-years his family and friends used laughingly to
charge him with beginning half his stories with the
words " When I was in Mesopotamia." Unfortunately,
too, the hardships that he underwent, and the terrible
recurrent fevers, permanently affected his constitution.
He was never quite the same man afterwards, though,
as Kars and Servia proved, he was still able to bear a
good deal.
The party which started from Constantinople on
August 28th, 1849, consisted of Layard, Sandwith, Mr.
Cooper, a London artist, who proved to be rather out of
his element in the Desert, and Hormuzd Rassam, after
wards well known as one of the prisoners in Abyssinia.
He was the brother of the British Consul of Mosul, a
Chaldean by birth, but English in tastes and education,
and regarded by Layard with considerable affection.
" His duties," says Sandwith, " are multifarious. He
acts as interpreter and secretary. He marshals the
servants, keeps the money-bags, speaks all the unknown
languages, and keeps us all amused by his gaiety, varied
by occasional sulks. Then besides these there were
Ahmed Agha, the Kavass or travelling policeman, a
good, honest, useful Turk ; and Cawal Yussuf, a Yezidee
priest, who had come to Constantinople to endeavour to
obtain some political amelioration of the condition of his

ARMENIA AND KURDISTAN. 45
people." This priest was the means of introducing the
party to some of its most interesting experiences. " He
was altogether a fine fellow. His eyes were of brilliant
black, his beard jet-black, and his large features were
set in the regular antique model of the old Assyrian
monarchs. His costume was that of Assyria ; a large tur
ban enveloping the head, a light cloak, an embroidered
jacket, a short gown, red boots, and sword and pistols,
formed a noble and picturesque figure. To one who
had never been beyond Constantinople his appearance
was most interesting. I might have imagined him a
specimen of some extinct and ancient race ; some hero
of Saracenic history, worthy to cope with the lion-
hearted Richard; perhaps the gallant Kurd Saladin
himself, the model of ancient Eastern chivalry — of whose
race indeed he was."
They reached Trebizond without accident, and in
due time started on the journey across the mountains
of Armenia, sometimes camping out, sometimes sleep
ing in huts whose character has not changed since
the days of Xenophon ; and after a week's travelling,
mostly through rain and mist, they came within sight
of the ancient city of Erzeroum, since that time often
enough introduced to the notice of Englishmen. " The
distant view of this city at the close of a long day's
journey was singularly impressive. The ancient kingdom
of Armenia, coeval with the Roman Empire, and the
theatre of many mighty struggles, was spread like a
map before us. The details had a character stern and
bleak ; not a tree was to be seen, but vast plains.

46 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
bounded by snow-capped, rugged mountains, whose
summits were clear and sharp against the rarefied
atmosphere, produced a striking effect upon the
mind." Layard and Sandwith rode on to the city, to be
hospitably received by the British Consul. Then,
carefully arming themselves and their escort — for
they were approaching a dangerous country — they
set off" on their way to Mesopotamia, now resting in
the quarters of some friendly Kurdish chief, now in
some Christian village, while Sandwith, who was the
sportsman of the party, revelled in his opportunities of
securing cranes, bustard, and other game unkno-wn in
England. In after-life he used to speak with un
bounded enthusiasm of the sporting capabilities of this
country, especially of a wonderful marsh a few days'
journey from Erzeroum, which, as he said in the " Siege
of Kars," was a very ornithological Babel, full of -wild
geese, sheldrakes, mallard, widgeon, and teal; while
the banks of a lake near by were crowded with active
little tringas, sandpipers, and longshanks.
Layard has himself described the remains of the
ancient city of Akhlat, and its beautiful situation on
the shore of Lake Van. In this ruined and almost
deserted town, once a great Ottoman stronghold, the
party spent some days, and Sandvsdth indulged to the
full the curiosity of the naturalist and the traveller,
delighting in the new fauna and the strange types of
humanity which every hour kept bringing to his notice.
Troglodyte gipsies, savage but picturesque and splendid-

ARMENIA AND KURDISTAN. 47
looking Kurds, half-starved peasants, and grave elders
travelling to Constantinople or to Mecca, formed a new
world within which to move ; while his reputation as
a Hekim, that almost sacred personage, brought round
his house every morning a crowd of lame, halt, and
blind, clamouring for the instant cure of their infirmi
ties. " Hekim Bashy," an old woman would exclaim,
" look at me. I am your sacrifice. I kiss the dust of
your feet; grant me your aid, and may God reward
you ;" and so saying, she held out a limb that
had been paralysed for years. But in many cases he
could give relief, and he went on, deeply impressed
with the faith of these poor people, and lamenting
that so many of the doctors who travelled through
Western Asia were mere charlatans, doing more harm
than good.
In 1849, Armenia everywhere presented to the
traveller the spectacle of a country ruined by oppres
sion and misgovernment, and it presents the same
spectacle to this day. When Sandwith passed through
it, and wrote down his impressions, the region was
unknown to Europeans, and the story was new, but to
us, who have witnessed the campaign of 1877, and
have heard the evidence of innumerable consuls, com
missioners, and travellers, the sad history is only too
familiar. We need not repeat in these pages the details
with which Layard's Hekim filled his diary ; it is
enough to say that, so far as the political aspect of the
question is concerned, one derives the same impression
from them that one derives from the most recent books

48 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
— that of Mr. Tozer, for example.* Everywhere it was
the same story — cities and villages, khans and roads,
ruined and destroyed; brigandage general; the tax-
collector everywhere at his odious work; the poor
cultivator robbed of all save the barest pittance, and,
hke Rousseau's celebrated peasant, resorting to every
shift to hide his possessions from the official eye.
Passing through the picturesque and interesting town
of Bitlis, the travellers came, after three days' journey
from the latter place, to the borders of the Yezidee
country. The Yezidees are commonly described as devil-
worshippers, their religion being a survival from pre-
Mohammedan times, and evidently having in it many
elements of the old Persian cult. They are a fine race,
handsome, brave, and independent, but even in 1849 the
incessant hostility of their Mussulman neighbours had
greatly reduced their strength ; for ages it had been the
custom for the messengers of Turkish tyranny to sweep
off into the harems of Constantinople any Yezidee
maiden who was fairer than her sisters, and even to put
to the sword any male defenders who might choose to
resist. At this time the Yezidees were in a state of
great excitement in consequence of a decree which had
gone forth from Constantinople affecting their rela
tions to the Empire. Hitherto the constitution of the
Turkish army had been based entirely on religion ; none
but Mussulmans were allowed to serve, and had it been
possible this condition of affairs would no doubt have
* " Turkish Armenia and Eastern Asia Minor," by tlie Eev. H. F.
Tozer. (Longmans : 1881.)

ARMENIA AND KURDItiTAN. 49
proceeded unchanged. But the visible decrease in the
dominant caste had begun to fill the minds of the
Sultan's advisers with alarm, and they found it necessary
to announce that in future the army would be recruited
from the Sultan's infidel subjects, such as the Yezidees
and Christians. The Yezidees saw that this would
mean that their conscripts would be forced, when far
from home and unprotected, to embrace Islam, and
that consequently both their religion and their tribal
¦existence would rapidly perish. They therefore sent to
Constantinople the Embass}'- of which Cawal Yussuf
was a member. He was now on his way home again,
after an absence of many months, unbroken by letter or
message. As he approached the borders of his own
country he came out in all his finery, donning a red
gown, and wrapping round his waist a shawl of bril
liant colours, " filled," as Sandwith says, " with a whole
arsenal of offensive weapons."
They came to the village, and then, " drawing part
of his turban under his chin, so as to hide the lower
part of his face, Yussuf approached his friends and
kindred with a heart full of emotion. He encountered
some of the villagers engaged with their oxen in
treading out the corn, and ' he spake roughly to them.'
The poor Yezidees, taking him for a zaptie or irregular
Government police officer and one of our guards,
trembled for their safety, and answered him in depre
cating tones. On this Yussuf suddenly uncovered his
face, exclaiming, ' What, my friends, know ye not your
priest ? ' A loud scream from a woman near him, and
£

50 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
the passionate exclamations of old and young who
rushed forward clasping his knees and kissing his feet,
followed this discovery, and Cawal Yussuf found himself
once more among a devoted and adoring people. We
quickly arrived, to see the good man in the midst of
these ovations, and when he turned round and recom
mended us to the care of his people, we were like to
have been smothered with the same attentions. Our
horses and servants were dragged in triumph into the
village, and fed with the best, while the fattest sheep in
their flocks was brought into the courtyard, where we
had installed ourselves, and sacrificed before us.
" Quickly did the news of our arrival spread from
village to village, and during the evening sundry
cavaliers kept dropping in to see their beloved priest,
and to feast their eyes on the pale-faced strangers,
Eltchies, or ambassadors from a distant and powerful
country, whose influence was such as even to reach the
ear of the great Padishah himself."
The passage of Layard's party through the Yezidee
country was a triumphal progress. In every village
they were welcomed by troops of horsemen, who came
out to meet them, followed by crowds of young men,
their heads wreathed with green leaves, while the house
tops were thronged with women. Feasts were provided
for them, till they almost rebelled against the fat sheep,
the pilau overflowing with butter, and the large un
leavened cakes. As they left the villages the young
men would escort them on horseback, and for their
edification would perform the wonderful and fascinating

ARMENIA AND KURDISTAN. 51
jereed, or mock combat, a marvel of agile and graceful
horsemanship. Passing through this region, and occasionally
stopping at Kurdish or Nestorian villages, where their
reception, if less brilliant, was generally not deficient
in cordiality, they came at last to the hills which
bounded the Assyrian plain, where a changed climate
and an entirely different population awaited them.
They were met on their descent into the level ground
by the exciting news that a band of five hundred
Bedouins were " out," and had been engaged for some
days in robbing and murdering throughout the neigh
bourhood. There was nothing for it but to hire a small escort
of Kurds, and to make the first march across the desert
by night. Nothing, however, happened except a false
alarm by way of practical joke — for the Eastern peoples
are a good deal given to this kind of amusement — and
in due time, after Sandwith had, to his intense satis
faction, bagged his first gazelle, they reached safety in
the castle of Abdi Bey, another Yezidee chief. That
the danger had been a real one, however, was soon
apparent, for that very night, while Layard's party slept,
wearied out by their march of thirty hours, a band of
marauders swept down upon Abdi's village and drove off
the cattle. When the visitors awoke they found that
their host and his armed followers had left to avenge
this insult ; and next night they saw, from the glare of
blazing corn-stacks on the horizon, that warm work was
going on. After twenty -four hours Abdi Bey returned.

52 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
" Striking the butt of his spear into the ground, he
sprang from the back of his panting mare, who had in
the last few hours shown her breeding. He entered his
castle with the proud and satisfied air of a brave warrior
who had done his devoirs. His white cloak was stained
with Arab blood, for he had been deep in a hard mel(^e,
and had slain with his own hands five men since last
we saw him."
With day the party proceeded on their joiu-ney, and
it may easily be imagined that, after the experience of
past nights, it was a journey not wanting in excite
ment. " Our eyes scanned intensely the horizon, and if
at any moment a crow or plover fluttered on its edge,
we started with anxious expectation. There was this
•day no talk of dulness, drowsiness, or monotony : all
was excitement. At last, as we descended a very gentle
•declivity, I exclaimed, ' Look, look ! what are those ? '
for behold, two figures appeared on our right ; nearer
they came, two horsemen at full gallop. ' Ah ! those
.are Arabs,' cried one of our party, as he caught sight of
the white horseman's cloak. ' Now we are in for it ;
more are coming.' Cawal Yussuf, seizing a double gun,
and digging his shovel-stirrup into his mare's flank,
bounded off to reconnoitre; The first horseman stops,
then advances; the other draws bridle and, suddenly
turning, goes off at full speed. Just then I turned to
the left and beheld a beautiful, a terrible sight. A band
•of thirty or forty turbaned lancers were pricking to
wards us over the plain. ' Ah ! here they are in force,'
I cried ; ' we are caught at last ! ' while the faces of our

ARMENIA AND KURDISTAN. 53
muleteers turned pale in dismal apprehension. Layard
turned and scrutinised them, and then joyfully ex
claimed, ' I know them; they are not Arabs, but Yezidees,
wdth Hussein Bey, come out to meet us.' Just then
Cawal Yussuf brought us the man against whom he
went out. This was a villager chased by an Arab, the
poor man having burned all his powder and broken his
lance while trying to defend his sacked village. And
now a pretty sight presented itself. Two of our party
went to meet the Yezidees, while these latter threw off
four or five of their main body to meet the new-comers.
Those detached advanced at a gallop, but in a zigzag
manner, as if to give a difficult aim to fire-arms. At
last the whole body came up, pistols were discharged in
the air, and the chiefs of either party leaped from their
horses and embraced.
" Our dusty and travel-worn cavalcade was now sur
rounded and escorted by a gallant and gaily-dressed
company of Yezidees, variously armed. Many carried
the long bamboo lance, others swords and pistols, but
all were bravely mounted, and each had a horseman's
seat. The young chief, Hussein Bey, was a pale, sickly
youth of nineteen, a beardless boy, but the hereditary
chief of all the nation. He was surrounded by priests,
stalwart bronzed fellows, armed to the teeth, and all
wearing black-fringed turbans. The High Priest him
self, a man of about forty, with a mild, intelligent
countenance, was riding by the side of Hussein Bey.
The young chief was dressed in a crimson jacket
gorgeously worked in gold, which glittered like a lizard

54 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
in the sun. Over this he wore a very light gauze-like
white cloak, which scarcely clouded the splendour of the
gold embroidery. A heavy silver sheath enclosed a
bright curved scimitar, his late father's. His head
dress was a light-coloured turban.
" We now rode over the dangerous plain in perfect
safety, for although the Arabs might have mustered a
much stronger force, they would scarcely have thought
it worth while to attack us, as they always • prefer
plunder without fighting, if possible."
Safety was at last reached, and the Yezidee escort
left them. They had entered a country of village
Arabs, degenerate and dirty, but peaceable enough, and
no further danger was to be anticipated. At Telkef
they were met by Mr. Rassam, the British Vice-Consul,
Hormuzd's brother, and, escorted by him, they ap
proached the broad and rapid Tigris, and the city of
Mosul.

CHAPTER V.
MESOPOTAMIA.
The head-quarters of the party were fixed sometimes at
Mosul and sometimes at Nimroud, and without loss of
time Layard set to work continuing those excavations
which he has himself minutely described, and of which
the material fruit is now in the British Museum. His
elaborate book, which deals both with the archaeological

MESOPOTAMIA. 55
and the actual aspect of the Assyrian desert, has made
it almost unnecessary for any second hand to go over
the ground which he has reaped. At the same time
there are details to be gathered from Sandwith's journal
which Layard has ignored ; and there is, besides, a fresh
ness, an enthusiasm, an almost boyish delight in the
new experiences of the wild life of the desert, which
marks out the writing of the younger traveller from
that of his companion and chief.
Leaving unnoticed, then, the excavations themselves,
and without attempting to tell the complete story of
the doings of the party in Mesopotamia and Eastern
Kurdistan during the whole of their sojourn there,
we may fairly dwell for a time upon certain aspects
of the country and the life, and certain incidents of
the journey, which most vividly impressed Sandwith's
imagination. At this time, it must be remembered,
he was essentially a sportsman; on him the free life
of the desert exercised an irresistible charm. He
had not had much share in England of the plea
sures of civilisation and settled order ; the contrast
between the narrow circumstances, the petty interests,
the constraining limitations of the life of a doctor's
apprentice, and the romantic aspirations with which his
mind was always filled, had been such as to disgust him
¦with Europe, and to make him hail with unreasoning
joy the novelty of the adventures of the East. Very
soon, indeed, reflection began to play its part, and to
show him that the actual and practical miseries wrought
throughout the Turkish Empii'e by barbarism and mis-

56 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
government were after aU the most real facts that
presented themselves fo the mind. His early journal is
full of references to the miserable state both of the
Christian and of the settled Mussulman population
throughout Armenia and Mesopotamia. Already the
seed was being sown which in after-years bore fruit in
his untiring advocacy of the claims of the Eastern
Christians, and in his energetic denunciations of Turkish
corruption. Layard himself was alive to the ruin
caused by the Turks when he said of the valley of the
Tigris, " One of the most fertile countries in the world,
watered by a river navigable for nearly six hundred
miles, has been turned into a desert and a wilderness by
continued misgovernment, oppression, and neglect ; " "'¦'
and the remark is echoed time after time in Sandwith's
journal. But it is not on this side of his Mesopotamian
travels that we need dwell; and, indeed, he himself
naturally prefers to describe his curious medical ex
periences, his adventures in search of game, his visits
to remote Arab tribes, and his wanderings through the
mountains which skirt the vast Assyrian plain. His
patients were numerous — ^from the pasha and the
French Consul on the one hand, to the crowds of
simple folk, suffering from all kinds of diseases, who
used to fill his court-yard in the early morning, or to
throng the entrance to his tent at his receptions about
the time of afternoon prayer. His story of his visit to
the French Consul at Mosul is pathetic, for the poor
man, emaciated and dropsical, who had been the
* " Nineveh and Babylon,"' p. 86, cd. 1867.

MESOPOTAMIA. 57
victim of a score of quacks, native or Levantine, greeted
the genuine European doctor as one who could, if not
save his life, at all events prolong it so that he might
once more touch the beloved soil of France. He was an
old soldier, and had survived the retreat from Moscow,
and at the time of Sandwith's visit was dying from
heart-disease. The doctor told him the truth, and
advised him quietly to remain where he was ; but his
home-sickness was stronger than his disease. He got
himself placed on a raft, and was floated down to
Baghdad and Bussorah, where his eyes were closed by
an English officer who happened to be engaged in
political work there — Colonel Williams, afterwards Sir
Fen wick Williams of Kars.
The reputation of the hekim — or rather hakeem,
for he was now in an Arabic-speaking country — soon
grew, and reached the ears of the pasha, w^ho happened
to be suffering from an attack of fever. The story of
Sandwith's visit to him may be quoted, both as amusing
in itself, and as throwing an interesting light upon the
manners and customs of the Levantine quacks who
abounded throughout the Ottoman Empire. After
describing the official summons, he proceeds : —
" I had not waited many minutes before the perdeh
was raised, and a gentleman styled the muhurdar, or
seal-bearer, beckoned me to enter. In a small room, and
on a very soft, comfortable-looking bed, lay the pasha,
flushed with fever, and rolling restlessly about ; an
attendant armed with a fly-flap kept those troublesome
insects in order, while another handed him his vinegar-

58 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
bottle, or from time to time bathed his forehead with a
wet towel. ' Eh, Hekim Bashi, hash guelden — welcome,
welcome,' he exclaimed ; ' feel my pulse ; ' which ac
cordingly I did, and otherwise examined him. He was
in the hot flt of a fever, and I ventured to promise him
a speedy cure, provided he would obey implicitly my
directions and take my medicines, all of which in
junctions he solemnly promised to observe. While I
was thus employed, the Italian doctor^ of whom I have
spoken was announced, and the pasha bade his people
bring him in. The curtain was raised, and a man of
forty, dressed in the modern Turkish costume, appeared.
He approached with his arms folded on his breast, and
in an attitude of the most abject humility. The pasha
condescendingly cried, ' Bouyoroon — come forward ' — and
he then ventured to come crouching forward, and seizing
the corner of the pasha's quilt he reverently kissed it,
although the latter put out his hand deprecatingly
exclaiming, ' Etme — don't do that.' The doctor then
knelt on the floor, looking profoundly awed by the great
man's presence, although the latter condescendingly told
him to seat himself on the sofa near me, but the doctor
exclaimed, ' Ustafer Ullah — God forbid ; the dust of your
feet is too glad to kneel here under your Excellency's
shadow. My soul is grieved,' he exclaimed, ' to hear of
your Excellency's illness. Inshallah ! you will soon be
better. Inshallah, Inshallah ! '
"This fellow was, I believe, a specimen of one of
the worst of his class. No poor wretched rayah could
humble himself in a more abject manner before a proud

MESOPOTAMIA. 59
Turk when he had anything to gain by it, and no one
could use his influence for worse purposes. The Turkish
army was chiefly doctored by Italians, and the capital
swarms with medicos of this nation, many of whom are
utterly uneducated. They were not uncommon in the
old days, and a delightful account of one is given by
Morier in the preface to his inimitable ' Hadji Baba.'
There are amongst them men who are ready tools in the
hands of unscrupulous pashas, and I have heard dark
hints of poisonings, besides well-authenticated stories of
more open villany practised by them. They have all
the cleverness and all the subtle subserviency of their
nation, and can turn their hands to anything. Thej^
however, seldom enrich themselves.*
" After the Italian had gone through the form of
feeling the pasha's pulse, we consulted together, and
agreed to give him quinine, the necessity of which was
obvious, and I added a little palatable effervescing
draught. The good English quinine, as usual, did
wonders, and on visiting my patient some days after, I
found him sitting on his sofa declaring himself quite
well. His attendants had experienced much difficulty
in making him take his pills, but he drank his effer
vescing draughts quite greedily. When I entered the
room he welcomed me most warmly, exclaiming, ' Eh,
Hekim Bashy, welcome welcome I Look, I am well. By
Allah, you are no end of a doctor ! Why, I no sooner took
your medicine than I felt it run all over me, whiz, whiz,
like boiling water, whiz, whiz, all through my veins.
* See Sandwith's own novel, " The Hekim Bashy : " London, 1864.

60 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
Wallah, I knew I was cured.' Coffee and pipes were
sent for, and the pasha treated me with infinite conde
scension and kindness, and on taking leave begged me to
visit him frequently as his friend. This Kiamil Pasha
was by no means one of the worst of his class. He was
very gentlemanly, but perhaps lazier and more apathetic
than is usual even among Turkish pashas. He was a
member of the Supreme Council of Constantinople, and
his appointment to Mosul was understood to be a sort of
honourable banishment. He was on the whole humane,
except when worked into a rage, which sometimes
happened, when he did things of which he afterwards
repented. The authority of a provincial pasha is
practically still of terrible force ; he is quite a despot,
and apt to abuse his power, as is too well known.
" Some days after my visit to the pasha his
defterdar (accountant) called upon me, and began to
compliment me highly on my medical skill. He then
said that his Excellency had directed him to call and
thank me for my invaluable services, to which he doubt
less owed his life. He trusted that my stay in his
pashalik would be agreeable ; he begged to know how
he could contribute to my amusement. Did I like
hunting? Twenty hyias (irregular horsemen) should
attend me wherever I wished to go, and beat up all
the game in the country for me. Of course I treated
this gentleman to a pipe and coffee, after discussing
which he gently insinuated that the pasha wished to
present me with a fee, the smallness of which he was
quite ashamed of, but he trusted I would excuse it;

MESOPOTAMIA. 61
having said which, he thrust a bag of piastres under
the pillow of my sofa, and gracefully took his leave.
The fee was really a handsome one, and I scarcely
knew which to admire most, the pasha's liberality, or
the delicate respect with which I was treated. I voted
both H. E. and the defterdar gentlemen."
One more extract, deahng with a different kind of
medical experience, may be given here, before we turn
to other aspects of the journey. This describes Sand
with's experiences in the encampment of the then well-
known chief, Mohammed Emin : —
" My medical reputation seemed to grow up and
flourish in the course of a few days. Many a young
practitioner would have had his fortune established had
he in a civilised country made as great a sensation as I
did on the banks of the Khabour. One of my first
patients was the most beautiful creature I had as yet
seen in the desert. A Bedouin brought his daughter,
a girl of about sixteen, who had some trifling ailment.
She was light and slender in form, with limbs as fine
and tapering as those of a high-bred filly. Her com
plexion was of a light bronze, suffused with the red
glow of health. Her pretty, straight nose was orna
mented with a large silver ring set with turquoises.
Her full, dark, and lustrous eyes had an expression of
great sweetness and modesty. The long blue skirt,
which was her only garment, added by its simple
drapery to the exquisite grace of her movements. As
this was my first patient, some indiscreet curiosity was
shown by the bystanders to see me feel her pulse, but

62 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
no sooner had three or four gathered round us, than a
deep blush spread over the face of the young Adela, and
turning her head away, she threw her arms around her
father's neck, hiding her face in his bosom. This simple
and natural movement, expressed with untaught grace,
was charming.
" As my patients became numerous, and pestered
me at all hours, I fitted up a spare tent to seiwe as my
dispensary, and gave out that I received at the time of
afternoon prayer {ass?'). I took my seat at the door of
my tent, and soon had a crowd around me, many suffer
ing from real diseases, many from imaginary ones, and
many bringing for my inspection the effects of diseases,
such as palsied limbs and stiff joints.
A young man was the first who presented himself,
most vociferous to see the hakeem. He entered mj'
tent and desired a private interview.
" ¦' Eshtareed, what do you want ? ' I asked.
"'Ya hakeem, shoo/,' he began, 'look here: I am
married to a wife, and am somewhat tired of her, and I
have fallen in love with a virgin whom I wish to marry,
but my wife, curses on her ! has found it out, ee wallah !
and has given her a charm which prevents the beautiful
virgin from loving me. I have beaten my wife, but
that is of no use. Ya hakeem, \ am your sacrifice' —
taking me by the beard,* which he kissed — ' God bless
you, hakeem, give me some strong medicine to kill the
charm, and I am your slave and sacrifice.'
* " ' And Joab said to Amasa, Art thou in health, my brother ? and Joab
took Amasa by the beard with the right hand to kiss him.' "—2 Sam. xx. 9.

MESOPOTAMIA. 63
" ' Here,' said I, ' take this pill fasting,* and you
are cured.' " And as he retired with the precious bread- pill, which
he tied up in a corner of his sleeve, he called down
blessings on my head.
"An old woman next came forward, and taking hold
of the corner of my cloak, she kissed it, and then
kneeling before me, began in a very wheedling manner to
call my attention to her case. She went on to describe
the most anomalous symptoms, affecting her eyes, ears,
limbs, and sometimes every part of her. On further
inquiry she confessed to be quite well at that moment,
but a year ago having had these strange complaints, she
dreaded the same thing would invade her this year. I
then promised to give her strong medicine, but ordered
the crowd to stand at a short distance from us. A
space is cleared, and all wait in silent admiration for m}'
remedy. I slowly draw forth a bottle of strong liquor
of ammonia (or smelling-salts) from my medicine-chest,
and holding it before my patient's eyes, tell her to draw
in a strong breath when I put it to her nose. I
accordingly first hold her nostrils, then having removed
the stopper, I apply the mouth of the bottle to the nose,
the fingers are removed, a long sniff is taken, followed
by a sort of spasm, and she falls to the ground. A
hum of horror runs through the crowd ; the patient
after a short interval rises, her eyes streaming with tears ;
and then broke from the crowd : —
'"Za Haha ilia 'llahic Mahommed rasulu Hah' —
* " Literally, 'on your saliva' f^ala-r-reeli)."

64 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
' There is no God but the God, and Mahomed is the
Apostle of God.'
" Added to these singular cases, and still more
wonderful cures, were others partaking less of charla
tanism, in which I was able to afford real relief. The
patients in their gratitude frequently brought me cheese
and butter ; but if the truth must be confessed, these
presents appeared to be given more as inducements to
exert my healing powers, rather than the spontaneous
outpourings of grateful hearts, since they were brought
before the patient was presented.
"Amongst numerous cases I found chronic rheuma
tism to be the commonest, also fevers, chronic coughs,
inflammations, diseases of the eyes, and the most loath
some skin diseases, and others which could only be
described in a scientific book, the diffusion and virulence
of which amongst the Desert tribes is a remarkable fact.
With the exception of gout and scrofula, I am bound
to add that I found most diseases that we are too apt
to ascribe exclusively to a high state of civilisation
•common enough amongst these simple children of the
Desert. " The chief causes of disease amongst these nomads
are the want of sufficient protection from the extremes
•of heat, cold, and wet to which they are liable, and
against which a tent is a very inadequate shelter ; the
unwholesome air of miasmatic ground, which is perhaps
more deadly than the bad air of ill-drained cities ; and
the utter absence of cleanliness, which often leads to
foul skin disease. An Arab, or at least a Bedouin

MESOPOTAMIA. 65
Arab, never washes himself except by accident, as in
the crossing of a river or by a heavy shower of rain,
and his garments are never washed, consequently he is
always dirty."
The first visit paid by the party after their ar
rival at Mosul was to the Yezidee settlement at Sheikh
Adi, at the time of a religious festival. " Our course
was to the east, towards the abrupt dark range of the
mountains of Kurdistan, forming the frontier between
Persia and Turkey. We passed the ruins of Khorsabad,
and presently we observed a dust in the distance, and
the glint of weapons and gay garments. Young
Hussein Bey was approaching with his following of
spears to escort us to his native village. He greeted us
with the grave dignity of a young Eastern. He wa?
superbly mounted on a dark chestnut, which he man
aged to perfection. His horse had all the beauties
of the Arab — a small, intelligent head, a bright eye, a
soft, silky mane and tail, and the general symmetry
which is obvious to the most untutored eye. We halted
for the night not far from Khorsabad, and resumed our
journey towards the mountains. We came upon several
Yezidee tombs, which are small pyramidal buildings of
white stone, and on approaching these the Yezidees
dismounted from their horses, took off their shoes, and
kissed reverently the walls. At last, as we came into a
rugged glen at the base of the real mountain range,
our escort dismounted, took off their shoes, and
walked bare-footed, as we were now within the precincts

66 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
of the sacred place. Fortunately they did not require us
to follow so inconvenient an example.
" We presently descended into a rocky glen in which
was a dense grove of oak, arbutus, and mulberry, and
from the dark grove were seen issuing the small white
spires of the sacred buildings. The gentle murmur of a
mountain stream was heard issuing from the shady
seclusion and mingling with the babbling noise of a
multitude of voices. As we approached we saw
numerous groups of white-robed men and women with
their children, some moving about the groves, others
seated under the shade of mulberry and fig trees. We
rode on until we came to the thickest part of the grove,
where a low stone building had been cleaned and pre
pared for our use, and here our comforts were spread on
the ground. The high priests and elders were gathered
together to receive us, and we were courteously invited
to repose after our journey in this cool and shady
place. At our feet rippled the clear mountain stream,
which in several places was collected into tanks, round
which were planted thick groves of trees ; indeed,
the whole valley was full of shady groves, under which
the most picturesque groups of old patriarchs and
young men and maidens were strolling about or re
posing. As each family arrived at the precincts of the
sacred glen, its advent was announced by the discharge
of fire-arms. Numbers of these people came respect
fully to gaze upon us, many of whom had probably
never before seen a European. Many of the boys and
young men were extremely handsome. I saw many

MESOPOTAMIA. 67
beautiful girls, resembling young gipsies in their com
plexion and the brilliancy of their eyes, but exquisitely
clean in their persons. Their costume was most
elegant; they wore a sort of gown of white cotton,
with ample trousers tied at the ankles, while a curious
kind of checked garment, not unlike the Scottish shep
herd's plaid, was fastened on one shoulder, and hung in
graceful folds of drapery from their bust. Their head
dresses were composed of gold or silver coins fastened
together curiously, while long plaits of hair hung down
their backs. In the evening nothing could exceed the
strange beauty of the whole scene. Hundreds of
small bitumen lamps were suspended from the trees,
so that the whole valley was illuminated, while from
the sacred groves and temples a wild music issued,
indicative of some rehgious rite.
"If the scene was beautiful during the day, it was
ten times more impressive at night. All that I had
ever read of Eastern scenes, from the heathen groves
denounced in Sacred Writ to the Egyptian mysteries or
the hall of Eblis, came crowding into my imagination,
and as I gazed on the scene before me, on the groups of
white-robed dancers moving gracefully to the sound of
solemn music, or the conclaves of long-bearded elders, I
was tempted to believe it all a dream; and while I gazed
I had my carpet and bed spread for me under a mulberry
tree, and fell asleep in the midst of this real fairyland."
The hospitality of Hussein Bey was returned in due
course, and Sandwith's account of the entertainment
given in his honour is worth quotation, if only to show

68 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
the intense fondness for wild and martial practical joking
which seems ingrained in the Arab, and of which the
Mesopotamian journal gives many examples.
" I have been to a great variety of dinner-parties
during my lifetime, but one of the most curious to
which I was ever invited I shall now attempt to
describe. Hussein Bey was asked to dine with us, and
although there may appear nothing formidable in
entertaining one man, even though he were Chief of the
Devil-worshippers, yet when it is remembered that his
invitation as a matter of course included his following,
namely, twenty spears, or rather the bearers of twenty
spears, it will be seen that such a dinner-party was a
formidable affair. However, the commissariat was in
the hands of Hormuzd Rassam, so we had nothing to fear
on that score. In the course of the afternoon Hussein
arrived, and was most politely received by our chief,
while his following came in for a share of attentions
from all of us. Hussein Bey's principal supporters were
his priests, all and each able-bodied men of the Church
Militant, and armed in the most approved fashion.
They were evidently but ill at ease when night closed in
and they found themselves within the walls of Mosul, a
position of the greatest danger under any but European
protection, for Mosul had drunk deep of Yezidee blood,
and her dungeons contained the mouldering bones of
many of their race. Gradually the sun of good-fellow
ship thawed the icy bonds of apprehension, and ere the
dinner had commenced our joUy guests had disarmed
themselves, doubled up their sleeves, and were prepared

MESOPOTAMIA. 69
to do ample justice to the skill of our cook and his
numerous assistants. The gates of the courtyard were
closed, there were none but friendly faces around ; why
should suspicion haunt the disciples of Sheikh Adi ?
" And now the dinner commenced. We were all
seated in a large circle round the courtyard, and a crowd
of servants brought in a succession of dishes overflowing
with grease, which were attacked with the energy and
perseverance of men who habitually lived in the saddle,
and who had ridden forty miles to dinner. The feast
was almost interminable, from the number of dishes, for
it was a point of honour to make our guests over-eat
themselves if possible. At last a huge pilau made its
appearance, which is a sign of the end of the dinner, as
a sweet pudding is with us.
" Pipes and coffee were now brought, and each guest
loosed the folds of his shawl and settled himself down
to enjoy comfortably the hour that passes between
dinner and bed. Just at this time a strange muffled
noise is heard at the door, as if a number of people are
trying to force a passage, and yet refrain from speaking
aloud, then at once bursts upon the ear a wild, unearthly
yell, and a troop of half -naked Arabs, with torches in one
hand and naked sabres in the other, rush in upon the
Yezidees. These latter, unarmed, astonished, with faces
expressing indignation and horror at being thus be
trayed to death, start to their feet, mechanically search
for their arms, and with their backs to the walls seem
prepared to meet their fate with indignant resignation.
The Arabs approach, wave their gleaming swords above

70 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
their heads, and turn off suddenly, and amidst shrieks of
laughter commence their war-dance. Some little time
elapsed ere the Yezidees quite recovered their equa
nimity, so sudden and terrible had been the start. It
was a practical joke of somewhat dangerous character.
Fortunately each guest was unarmed, or some one must
have fallen.
" The whole courtyard was filled with Arabs — there
were about 180 of them — many of whom held torches
in their hands, whilst numbers of them joined in a -wild
but. graceful sword-dance. Their naked limbs, the
simple drapery of their costume, and their often hand
some faces and figures, showed well in the torchhght.
It was a beautiful sight, worthy of the pencil of
Rembrandt. I often regretted my want of artistic skill
to portray scenes such as these, which are seen probably
but once in a lifetime."
At another time it was not the Yezidees, but the
Bedouins, who were entertained by Mr. Layard, and
Sandwith's account of this dinner-party is not less
interesting than that of the former, as an illustration of
the never-ending danger to which the Desert tribes feel
or felt themselves exposed. Among the party was a
handsome young sheikh of twenty years, who had left
his encampment without his mother's knowledge. To
the astonishment of hosts and guests, the old lady made
her appearance during the feast, and insisted upon
taking up and keeping her position by the side of her
son, even when at nightfall these noble savages were
turned into an empty room to sleep upon the floor.

MESOPOTAMIA. 71
There was a reason for this. The lad's father had been
a great chief in the neighbourhood of Mardin, and had
for a long time maintained an independent freebooting
existence in defiance of the Turks and the pasha.
Neither force nor bribery had availed against the strategy
of the chief and the fleetness of his horses, and after
many attempts to conquer or capture him, the pasha
had been forced to make terms. Then, for some time,
matters went well. The two potentates met in the
desert and saluted one another as friends. At last, in
an evil hour, the sheikh was persuaded to seal his friend
ship by visiting the pasha in Mosul and accepting his
hospitality. The end of the story may be easily fore
seen ; amid the warmest professions of friendship and
devotion, poisoned coffee was handed round, and the
sheikh and his followers were only able to mount their
horses, to curse their treacherous enemies, and to reach
their camp to die. Since that time no member of the
tribe had entered a Turkish city, except in fear and
trembling, and when the murdered chief's widow heard
of her son's having entered the gate of Mosul, she
followed to protect him, or to die by his side.
The visit of the party to the Yezidees of the Sinjar,
a mountain range some distance to the west of Mosul,
has been described at considerable length by Mr. Layard,
whose account differs but little from that given by
Sandwith. One of the results of this visit was the rati
fication of a treaty of peace between the Yezidees and
the neighbouring Bedouins, a treaty chiefly brought
about by Layard's efforts. It was after this visit was

72 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
ended that Sandwith saw, for the first time, a genuine
Bedouin encampment ; for the chief, Suttum, well
known to readers of Layard, had been the bearer of an
invitation from his father that the party should visit
the tribe of the Boraij.
" An unbroken expanse of interminable grass plain
was before us, and here were the native denizens of this
wild region. An air of perfect pastoral tranquillity
reigned around. Camels, sheep, and cattle, each flock
under the care of some lazy keeper, were seen straying
to considerable distances, but near the tents were
tethered the most valuable mares and horses; while
young foals were seen here and there domesticated in the
tents themselves, with naked children feeding or toying
with them. Withered beldames, with grizzly matted
locks, and wrinkled parchment skins, almost black by
exposure to a series of Mesopotamian summers, were
seated spinning camel-hair, while they scanned the
white-skinned strangers with their piercing black eyes
gleaming with savage wonder and curiosity.
" Sheikh Suttum met us at the door of his tent, and
greeted us with the air of a duke receiving royalty as
he placed us on a pile of dirty cushions and carpets,
while he seated himself on the ground before us. He
introduced us to his father, a venerable old plunderer,
with bright Bedouin eyes, a grizzled beard, and
wrinkled skin. We sat and talked in the tent while
the ladies of the household were peeping through the
curtains at the strangers. Presently I was sent for to
see a patient about a mile and a half off. I mounted

MESOPOTAMIA. 73
my horse, and, accompanied by Hormuzd, crossed the
large ground which was encircled by the tents.
Striking into a canter, I was sharply rebuked by
Hormuzd, who told me that to gallop here was a grave
breach of etiquette. I presently arrived at the tent,
where I found a poor girl suffering from fever. These
Bedouin ladies were dressed much as other Arab
women, but more profuse and curious in ornaments.
Each lady of rank wore a silver ring set with turquoises
and fixed in the cartilage of the nose, from which it
hung over the mouth. Many of them also wore
massive silver rings round the wrists and ankles, and
these ornaments had a very pleasing effect, contrasting
as they did with the brown skin. A long blue skirt
was the only dress they wore except in cold weather,
when a coarse striped cloak was added, differing in no
wise from that worn by the men. The harem, or ladies'
half of the tent, differed from the other half in being
more dirty and disorderly, for here were wooden cradles,
cooking cauldrons, bedding (very dirty), large sacks of
provisions, and numerous naked children, with a sick
calf in one corner, and a favourite mare and foal in
another. However, all the inmates appeared to be very
happy, if not comfortable. After this professional visit
to the harem, into which of course my companions were
not admitted, we were presently summoned to dinner.
All the elders and brave men of the tribe met us at the
banquet, which consisted of a huge bowl of rice, boiled
and thoroughly saturated with grease, and upon it was
piled a lamb, also boiled. The head and delicate parts.

74 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
being placed in a little hollow in the rice, were offered
to the most distinguished guests. We all set to work
with our fingers, making use of our pocket-handkerchiefs
to wipe them with when they became very greasy, ex
cepting when a neighbour would, as a delicate attention,
offer the end of his shirt as a napkin. Of course great
decorum was observed ; too many never sat down at
once, but after we had eaten enough the sheikh called
others by name to take our places, and these again gave
place to others, and so on until the small boys fell upon
what remained with apparently a better appetite and
less ceremony than the elders."
It was on the journey after leaving this encampment
that Sandwith had his first experience of Eastern
falconry, for Suttum, who rode with the party, took his
hawk with him.
" I rode near Suttum, and helped him to look out
for game. The hawk was carried unhooded on the
wrist. Presently I saw her suddenly direct her piercing
eyes to the right, and then nod her head. After this
she spread her wings and struggled to be free. Her
jesses were loosed, and she flew off to a certain distance ;
she then rose a httle in the air, and down she came
upon a bustard (Otis hobara), which, ruffling its feathers,
returned the fell swoop of the hawk with a vigorous
repulse. The hawk rose again, and down again she
came upon her victim, and flxing her talons into its
shoulders, attacked it vigorously with her beak. We
now rode quietly up to within thirty yards, when
Suttum, leaping from his dromedary, advanced cau-

MESOPOTAMIA. 75
tiously, calling the hawk by her name, Hawa, hawa,
and seizing the quarry, he allowed the hawJi to tear and
taste the reeking flesh, and then quietly slipped on. the
hood, bagged the game, and rode on to seek for further
adventures. After awhile the hawk was once more un
hooded, and before long she again caught sight of a
hobara. She was once more loosed, flew to the spot, and
pounced on the quarry. This time the hobara behaved
gallantly, for each swoop was returned with a furious
charge. Again and again the hawk flew at the bird,
but was repulsed as often, until the hawk sulkily
refused to flght any more, and allowed the bird to retire
victorious. And now Suttum, riding up, approached
cautiously the disappointed falcon, crying out Hawa,
hawa (the wind), and waving the last-killed bustard.
The hawk presently rose, and making a few gyrations
round her master, alighted upon his shoulder, and began
to attack vigorously the dead bird. She was allowed to
pluck a mouthful or two from the body, and then, the
hood being slipped over her head, she took her station
on the -wrist of her master.
" We continued our journey, which this sport of
falconry helped to make delightful. The hawk was
flown five times that day, and killed thrice, so that we
made a very fair bag, as the hobara is a princely bird,
larger than a domestic fowl, and is of exquisite delicacy
for the table. The hawk never attacked a bird on the
-wing, as I know falcons do in general, but whenever the
game took flight she refused to follow. Once I observed
that, after being foiled in her first swoop, she alighted

76 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
on the ground, and trotting up to the bird, commenced
a regular cock-fight, in which the hawk came off vic
torious ; though the battle was generally concluded by
Suttum interfering in favour of the hawk before the
poor bustard was thoroughly vanquished, although it
was held fast. After losing a bird, or being beaten
off, the falcon came to the lure, but not to her master.
It was clear to me that these birds are not so domes
ticated that they vdll, like the dog, come to the call.
They are merely allured by the hope of food. All theii:
education consists in making them familiar with man.
It is a popular error to suppose that a hawk can ever
be trained to come to the call of his master as does a
dog ; the utmost to which his training extends is to be
perfectly fearless of and familiar with man.
" This hawk of Suttum's was, I believe, a species of
kite or ignoble bird. Very different was she from the
Shaheen or peregrine falcon, used chiefly by the Persians,
who are great falconers. This hawk will fly at anything
but gazelles, so great is his courage. Another hawk is
flown at the gazelle in company with greyhounds. The
peregrine falcon is a cosmopolitan, and is found in the
mountains of Norway and, I believe, in the Himalayas
too. In Persia he is flown at bustards, cranes, ducks,
geese, and swans. He possesses the courage of the
Scotch terrier, size being no obstacle to him. Falconry
has been a favourite sport in the East from time
immemorial, and various are the birds used in it. The
most extraordinary kind of falconry I ever saw was
that practised by the Khirgese Tartars. I have seen

MESOPOTAMIA. 77
them fly eagles at foxes, and a very fine sight it was.
The Turk Tartars have also introduced this sport
into the Transcaucasian provinces. This eagle is called
Barkut in the Khirghiz or old Turkish."
Their way led them, in due time, to the river
Khabour, near which are the camping-grounds of the
Jebour tribe of Arabs, whose chief was the Mohammed
Emin mentioned above. Here, at the encampment of
Arban, took place the medical adventures of which we
have quoted the description, and many adventures of
the chase, on which we need not dwell. One incident
which he records is so characteristic of Bedouin life,
and of the politics of the Desert, that it may well be
given : —
" One morning, during our stay at Arban, I awoke
rather early, and observed symptoms of excitement
amongst the Arabs. Some were cro-wning the mound
and looking out towards the north, while others were
mounting their horses. I asked what was the matter,
and was told there was some fighting going on ; so,
wishing to see the fun, I called for my horse, and hastily
arming myself I galloped off to the northward. I saw
in the distance a large body of men approaching, and
thinking they were enemies, I advanced cautiously to
reconnoitre, but obsei-ving our o-wn Arabs gallop up and
join them, I did the same, and found it was Mohammed
Emin bringing in as captives about 200 men with their
tents, women, and children, and the whole of their flocks
and herds. There were no wounded amongst them, and

78 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
I was completely puzzled at the phenomenon, but had
it aU explained to me afterwards. It appears that the
people thus brought in were a broken remnant of a once
respectable and independent tribe, which had been so
reduced in the world that, like Malta, Sicily, or Corfu,
they could no longer maintain a separate existence, and
so, according to some ancient traditional treaty, they
lived under the protection of Mohammed Emin, affording
him, of course, so many more javelins and spears for his
own defence. For some cause or other which was never
explained to me, this tribe wished either to be inde
pendent or to unite itself with some other neighbouring
tribe, so one morning Mohammed Emin's Lord High
Commissioner reported that his tributaries were off.
They had gone one day's journey, and were encamped to
rest their cattle at a certain spring, but another day's
march would put them in the territories of the Aneyzee.
Mohammed Emin was a man of action. Within an hour
he had assembled a formidable array of spears, and as
night fell he commenced his march sUently, swiftly, and
secretly, three golden words in war. In the early dawn,
just as the recreant tribe was about to march, behold,
emerging from the morning's mist, appeared the terrible
form of their suzerain chief, surrounded by his choicest
fighting-men. Halting his party, he rode forward with
his boy Reshid. ' Yah, sheikh,' he cried to the chief of
the tribe, who saluted him respectfully, but without the
salaam aleikum ; ' is it peace, 0 brother, or is it war ?
Choose now without delay, for we have ridden far, and
the spears of my followers thirst for blood. Moreover,

CONSTANTINOPLE. 79
thy women ride swift dromedaries and ours lack them,
and our children are cold and wish for raiment ; choose
now, and may the Prophet help thy judgment to thy own
advantage, for we are ready for either decision.' The
sheikh looked behind him, and saw numbers of his men
ready for the fight, but most of them were but footmen,
armed only with the javelin or the club. Moreover, he
saw his camels, his mares, and his asses, his sheep, and
his goats, all waiting to be a prey to the spoiler if the
victory were not decisively on his side ; moreover, we may
suppose that he took a common-sense view of the origin
of the movement — merely a restless love of change — and
so he determined wisely to capitulate at discretion, and
he and all his people marched to their old quarters, and
peace and harmony were restored as at first. A day or
two after this event I saw the refractory tribe feeding
their flocks as usual under the protecting shadow of
Mohammed Emin, and no long time elapsed ere their
horsemen joined their suzerain in a ghazon or plunder
ing party."

CHAPTER VI.
CONSTANTINOPLE.
Theoughout the spring and early summer of 1851,
Sandwith's life was that of the pure son of the Desert.
Visits to Arab tribes, both, near and far, sporting
adventures, and multifarious experiences as a hakeem.

80 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
filled up a period to which he always looked back as the
most delightful of his life. Towards the end of June,
however, the time came to leave Mosul on a more
distant excursion ; and though he had intended to
return -with Layard, and to stay until the excavations
were finished, he was not destined to see the Assyrian
plain again. It was agreed that he and a European
friend, who happened to be in the neighbourhood,
should explore the course of the river Zab for a few
days, should join the party at Akra, should travel
through Eastern Kurdistan, and pass over into Persia,
returning in due time to continue the work at Mosul.
Unfortunately, as far as Sandwith was concerned, the
journey was a disastrous failure. At the very outset,
just as he reached the low land near the junction of the
Zab with the Tigris, his old enemy the Bitlis fever was
upon him, and for a long time it never left him. The
heat was that of a furnace. "Nothing living was
visible on the burnt-up plain save large spiders and
scorpions." Paroxysms of fever succeeded one another,
and often he gave himself up for lost. In one Christian
village he found shelter from the burning heat in the
ancient church, or, again, he was hospitably entertained
in the Nestorian convent of Mar Mattai, perched like
the nest of some rock-haunting bird on the side of a
precipitous mountain. Presently he was well enough
to push on, though in miserable discomfort, to the
Kurdish town of Akra, where in a short time Layard
and the rest of the party joined him. The journey
from Akra through the mountains would have been

CONSTANTINOPLE. 81
delightful — for the country was exceedingly beautiful,
and the types of civilisation which they met with were
full of the charm of novelty — but the horrible fever was
never absent, or if it were, it left its effects in the form
of extreme weakness. Sandwith's notes of the journey
are, as might be expected, but scanty, and in after
life he was always expressing his regret that he had not
been able fully to observe and appreciate what struck
him as one of the most interesting countries in the
world. In due time they arrived at the town of Van,
situated on the great lake of that name ; and here it
was decided that he should leave the party, and make
the best of his way back to Constantinople. With a
comrade and a servant he started for Erzeroum, as soon
as he had recovered just sufflcient strength to bear the
journey ; and with scarce a change of clothing, no tent,
and in utterly shaken health, he passed through a
country where roads hardly existed, and where none
but the coarsest food could be obtained. After many
terrible days he reached Erzeroum. There, in the
hospitable house of the English Consul, and with proper
medical care, he recovered so far as to be able to push
on to Trebizond, and on the 29th September, after a
journey of exactly three months from leaving Mosul,
he arrived at Constantinople. His health had been so
much reduced by the incessant fever and the hardships
of the journey, that it was two years before • he could
consider himself completely restored.
There was nothing for it, however, but to resume
the old life at Constantinople, and while curing him-

82 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
self to look out for others to cure. His reception
at the Embassy was of a somewhat doubtful kind,
for while all the young attaches and secretaries were
as friendly as of old, he did not find himself readily
taken into the good graces of Sir Stratford Canning.
Lady Canning, however, was always an excellent
friend to him, and little by little her kindness and his
tact, together with some really reiifiarkable cures that
he was able to effect, succeeded in conciliating the Am
bassador. This however was not all that was wanted,
for a man cannot make a living out of smiles and
kindly words. Patients were few, and fees fewer still,
and for a long time the struggle was hard and depress
ing. Like all persons of his mercurial temperament,
Sand-with was liable to fits of extreme discouragement,
during which he would often be on the verge of making
resolutions of a somewhat desperate character. For
example, among the records of this period we find that
on one occasion he and his friend Hughes had elaborated
a plan for throwing up Constantinople altogether, and
for starting off into Central Asia, where they were to
pass from tribe to tribe as travelling hakeems, intending
to return after a few years and give their experiences
to the world. There can be no doubt that, if they had
survived such an adventure, their book would have been
worthy to rank with those in which Vambdry has
described Central Asia, and Schweinfurth the Soudan.
But it was not their destiny to attempt such a career. At
the critical moment Sandwith was removed out of the
reach of actual want by being appointed to the tempo-

CONSTANTINOPLE. 83
rary charge of the British Hospital at Constantinople,
with a small salary ; and although his patients were
never numerous, they in time mustered strong enough
to give him some kind of a living. He was happy
enough to save from extreme peril a lady who had been
given over by all the other doctors — Mrs. Marsh, the
¦wife of the American Minister afterwards so well
known both as a man of letters and as the representative
of his country at Florence and Rome. His services to
the Ambassador's household and to other well-known
persons were from time to time considerable, and when
it seemed probable that the post of Physician to the
Embassy would be vacant. Sir Stratford had so far
changed towards him that he promised to lend him all
his influence in furthering an application for the post.
It may be here stated, however, that this appointment
was never made, and that all the time he was in
Constantinople, Sandwith had to work independently.
So much has been written since 1852 on Turkish
manners, Turkish policy, and on the past, the present,
and the future of the Turkish Empire, that it would be
out of place to repeat much of what Sandwith has
said in his autobiography on these subjects. We have
passed through, during those thirty years, one great
war undertaken on behalf of Turkey, and a political
crisis which brought us to the verge of war for the
same cause. In a country like England this must
imply a wide diffusion of some kind of knowledge —
often, indeed, superflcial enough — about Turkey and

84 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
her affairs, so that what was new and fresh in 1852
would now be condemned as the mere re-telling of an
old story. It must be remembered, however, that
Sandwith's opportunities for observing Turkish life,
and for forming an opinion on the political question,
were altogether exceptional. He was entirely unpre
judiced. He knew little of official traditions. He
spoke Turkish well. His profession gave him access to
Turkish society to an extent almost unprecedented for
an Englishman; for not only did he visit Turkish
gentlemen at their houses, dine with them, chat with
them, spend whole days in their company, but as a
doctor he was admitted even into the secret recesses of
the harem. Moreover, his travels both in Asia Minor
and in European Turkey enabled him to see with his
own eyes the full effects of the Turkish system of
government upon the provincial population, so that his
judgments must be regarded as those of a singularly
open-minded man, who had formed them in the school
of experience. A few details and anecdotes gathered from his
jom-nal may be not without interest even at this
distance of time ; for it must be remembered that the
official Turk in 1884 is the same as he was in 1852, and
that neither the system nor the character of the men
has really changed at all. Here are some stories of
certain Turkish guests at a ball at the Austrian
Embassy. " I well remember the scene," says Sandwith,
" for the rooms were really beautiful, and were well
filled with an infinity of uniforms and beautiful ladies'

CONSTANTINOPLE. 85
dresses. I sat with a friend in a quiet corner, unnoticed,
enjoying what I saw, and listening to his chronique
scandaleuse of the characters before us. There is a smart
little fellow, dressed in modern Turkish costume, but
with an air as jaunty and gay as that stiff dress will
allow ; his moustache is waxed to a nicety ; his hands
are exquisitely gloved; he wears a magnificent star on
his left breast, which you might take to be the Grand
Cross of the Bath, but which is really the badge of the
Lion and the Sun of Persia, which he has obtained by
presenting a questionable book to the Shah. This is
Prince Tchorbaji, a most distinguished individual. He
is the son of Prince Tchorbaji, the fat old man leading
a lady round the room. ' What is he Prince of, or to
what Royal Family does he belong ? ' The answer is
somewhat curious. The father is a Greek, the son of a
very respectable Greek tailor who once lived in Galata.
Yonder fat old gentleman was a sharp lad, who disdained
the tailor's needle, and who, having a turn for books and
languages, got an old MoUah to teach him to read and
write Turkish, after which he picked up French, and
was then picked up himself by Ahmed Pasha and made
his dragoman or interpreter. From step to step he
climbed the ladder of fortune, until he held several
Government employments, and was called Bey. Now
' Bey ' is a title not accorded to everybody, least of all
to every Christian, and to be allowed to bear it was for
a Greek in Turkey a mark of high distinction. In time
M. Tchorbaji was sent to represent the Sultan at
Madrid, and there he thought it advisable to translate

86 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
the word 'Bey' into 'Prince.' On his visit to England
he passed as a very good sort of prince ; he was grace
ful, courteous, gentleman-like, and no one had a
suspicion of his origin. In London he took precedence
of dukes and Cabinet Ministers, and was looked upon
as in some sort connected with the Cantacuzenes, and
as belonging to a branch of an ancient Imperial
Byzantine family, which amply accounted for the innate
grace and dignity of his manners. Meanwhile, as we
are watching the younger prince, a fat old pasha
approaches, attended by a meek-looking young Perote,
who speaks French and interprets for him. As he
approaches the prince, the latter very dexterously
snatches off the Star of the Lion and the Sun, which he
transfers from his breast to his pocket. Then he makes
a run to the fat pasha, and kisses his feet, and then
stands before him with hands folded, the picture of an
Eastern slave. Chapkem Pasha addresses him with a
beautiful mixture of insolence and condescension such
as none but a Turk can put on.
" This is the great Chapkem Pasha, who began life
as a good-looking barber's boy in Constantinople, in
that capacity coming into high favour with several
pashas. At eighteen or twenty he was made scribe to a
regiment, and being a youth of Oriental talent, he soon
had a share in the clothing and victualling department.
In a few years we find him associated with the great
Roum Pasha in organising the army. The vast expense
of the new troops made people talk. The matter was
looked into, and some £100,000 were unaccounted for.

CONSTANTINOPLE. 87
What was to be done ? It would never do that Roum
should be disgraced, so his young colleague heroically
bore all the blame, was dismissed with ignominy, and
after two years' retirement in a small house on the Bos
phorus, the grateful Roum got him appointed governor
of a distant city. While there, disturbances broke out
between the Christians and the Mussulmans, which
Chapkem was suspected of having fostered in order to
seize the Christians' goods. His enemies were so active
that an inquiry was insisted upon, and witnesses were
sent from the to-wn in order to appear before the
judges in Constantinople. While on their way in a
steamer they were all seized with cholera — that is,
violent vomiting after a meal — and not one of them
recovered. Thus Chapkem was cleared, and here he is
at the Austrian ball, in all the pride of power."
The story of another of the guests is too charac
teristic of the Turkey of that day to be omitted. This
was M. Volpini, a well-dressed and agile gentleman, who
looked scarcely more than forty years of age, but who
was really some fifteen years older. The account of
him was given to Sandwith by an Englishman who
knew the hero intimately, and himself a trustworthy
man who could not be suspected of exaggeration. " M.
Volpini is now the head of the detective police. He
was by birth the nephew of a great man, the Count
Beutendorf, a Greek by family, and once Prime Minister
of Russia. Young Volpini made his way to St.
Petersburg, to push his fortunes under the auspices of
his uncle, and he soon succeeded in establishing himself

88 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
as an officer in the Chevalier Guard in the capital, and
in finding a rich and beautiful wife. Very soon, how
ever, he took to gambling ; and one day, a few months
after the marriage, it was discovered that the young and
highly connected officer had absconded, having forged
the name of his colonel. He disappeared, and nothing
more was heard of him for some time. Two or three
years afterwards a yacht put into the port of Syra,
and an Italian nobleman, the Count Santa Rosa, repre
senting hilmself as being in some way connected with
the Russian Government, called on the Russian Consul.
He showed an intimate acquaintance with all the lead
ing families of St. Petersburg, and soon induced the
mystified Consul to advance him, for Government pur
poses, a considerable sum of ready money. The count
then sailed away, and w^as heard of no more in Syra
until the rumour came that he had sold his yacht, and
had taken to a religious life as a Capuchin monk in
Lisbon. This, however, was but a short stage in his
career, and the next thing that was heard of him was
that he had been seized with other brigands in the act
of robbing a caravan in the neighbourhood of Smyrna.
With his hands tied behind him he was driven along by
zaptiehs, and brought into the presence of the Pasha of
Smyrna. ' Rogue and villain,' says the pasha, ' what
have you to say for yourself ? ' '0 pasha, hear me !
Why these cords, this treatment ? Do you take me for
a thief ? Do you not know who I am ? ' ' Who you
are ! Why, a robber. I know you well.' ' Take care,
pasha, what you say. I am neither a thief nor a Turk ;

CONSTANTINOPLE. 89
I am the son of Van Lennep, the Dutch Consul of
Smyrna, and to him I will complain of yourself and
your zaptiehs.' ' God forbid ! You the son of the
Dutch Consul, my friend Van Lennep ! Impossible !
Policeman, go for Van Lennep to come and look at this
man. Quick ! Loiter not ! ' ' What are you doing ? '
exclaims the prisoner. ' Are you sending for the
Dutch Consul as though he were a porter or a
policeman ? He -will not run at your bidding.
Send me to him -with the chief policeman; my father
will soon tell you who I am. ' So the pasha, thoroughly
mystified, sends his offlcer with the prisoner, who soon
succeeds in getting his cords unloosed, and in due time
they arrive at Van Lennep's front door. There the
prisoner tells the offlcer he will speak to his father, and
enters the rooms, quietly passing through to the back
door, which leads to the quay, and, with his usual genius
for escape, disappears, and is heard of no more, while
Van Lennep, a most respectable old bachelor, is driven
furious by the impudent story which the policeman
retails to him. Some time after this, a clever Greek
lawyer settled in Samos, and by his astuteness and
general knowledge of the world imposed much upon the
primitive inhabitants of the island, finally becoming
what we may call their attorney-general. After awhile
his wife joined him — a beautiful and fascinating woman,
Yvhose refined manners and gentle bearing, not untinged
with melancholy, won all hearts. There was some
mystery about the couple ; he was cold and harsh, and
.she reserved. Soon he became violently attached to the

90 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
wife of the governor, who returned his passion, and.
shortly afterwards a crime of the darkest dye threw the
island into consternation. The attorney-general had
poisoned his -wife and fled. Before the island could re
cover from the shock, a long felucca, crowded with armed.
men, had landed from the opposite coast, plundered and
murdered the governor, and carried off his wife, the late
attorney- general being recognised as the chief of the
marauders. Nothing was heard of him again for a con
siderable time, but one evening a Frank merchant of
Scio was passing by a mosque at Broussa at the moment.
when the call of the muezzin was summoning the
faithful to prayers. He recognised the deep rich voice,
and posted himself where he would have an opportunity
of accosting the muezzin as he passed by. Under the
large white turban he recognised the unmistakable-
features of Volpini, and at once challenged him. He
was received, not with a salute, and not with shame
faced denial, but with a storm of Turkish abuse from
the holy and outraged Mussulman which well-nigh
raised against the stranger an outburst of fanatical rage.
A few more years passed by, and Volpini, the forger,
swindler, and murderer, was installed in a high post in
the Detective Offlce at Constantinople."
During this period of his life Sandwith mixed
freely with all classes and all races of Constan-
tinopolitan society, his practice lying principally
among the English colony and among the Turks.
Of Greeks and Armenians he saw something, but
not so much as of the dominant race. His pro-

CONSTANTINOPLE. 91
fessional experiences had a decisive influence in forming
those ideas with regard to Turkey and the Ottoman
Power, which in the crisis of 1876-78 he explained
so frequently and with so much effect. From what
he saw in Constantinople in the years preceding the
Crimean war he formed a clear and definite view with
regard to the Turks, namely, that though their
character, under Asiatic and semi-barbarous conditions,
was attractive, and often even noble, they were en
tirely unfit to exercise political power over European
races, or indeed over any races not professing the
Mohammedan religion. From the copious stores
of anecdote with which his autobiography abounds, it
is easy to see that this view was forced upon him
almost in spite of himself ; for his instincts, as the
preceding chapters will have abundantly shown, were
all in favour of the adventurous, the foreign, the
strange aspects of life, and opposed to the humdrum and
orderly civilisation in the midst of which he had been
brought up in England. Though since that time a vast
mass of literature has been produced on everything that
concerns Turkey and the East, one or two of these
anecdotes may be quoted without fear that they will
have lost their interest.
" Friday is the great holiday amongst the Turks,
and answers to the Sunday as observed in Roman
Catholic countries, and on Friday I used often to stroll
through the streets with my Turkish friends and pay
visits. On one of these occasions we stepped into the
house of the Clerk of the Foreign Office, and joined him

92 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
in his morning meal. After a good deal of conversation
on the small events of the day, Mahmoud Effendi, our
host, asked me to step into his harem and see a negro
slave. In a small garret I found a poor negress lying
prostrate with some grievous sickness, which a short
examination proved to be the consolidation of a lung.
I began to propose a careful course of treatment, when
Mahmoud Effendi interrupted me by asking if I
thought it possible she might die. I replied that such
an event was not only possible, but very probable, and
that the greatest attention would be necessary if she
was to be saved. ' Oh, in that case,' said he, ' I must
lose no time, but send her back immediately to the man
from whom I bought her a week ago. She must have
been unsound then, and I don't want to lose by her.'
The poor negress, breathing hard, and flushed with
hectic fever, turned her large imploring eyes towards us,
mutely seeking relief, but she met with no sympathy
from her owner. To save a few miserable piastres she
was plucked from her bed of sickness to be lifted on
the back 'of a porter, who carried her through the
streets to die in the wretched cell of the slave-dealer."
A more pleasant aspect of Eastern domestic slavery
is presented in the following story : — " My friend Riza
Effendi told me the other day that his brother was
married. This was an awkward hobble-de-hoy who
lived in the same house, and had a tremendous appetite.
He often made me smile as he would wait with eager eyes
watching for the moment when his elder brother would
dip his flngers into a new dish, so that he might follow.

CONSTANTINOPLE. 93
I asked whom he had married, and Riza told me that a
friend of his had an only son, on whom he doted. ' But
God is great ; he has translated him ; he no longer
lives.' The lad's mother had long ago bought a little
Circassian girl, whom she had carefully educated to be
her son's wife, and had taught her to look up to him,
to consult his whims and fancies — in short, to learn to
be a devoted wife ; but now that her son was dead the
poor mother could no longer bear the sight of the girl,
and insisted that she should be sent away. Her husband
was in a difficulty ; he could certainly have sold her,
but was averse to so doing, as she had twined herself
round his heart, and he had always regarded her as his
daughter. Under these circumstances he asked his
friend Riza's ad^vice, and the latter, hearing so good an
account of the girl, thought she would suit his brother.
His friend was delighted with the suggestion, and so
the pair were married, the two families being thence
forward connections, since the slave-girl had been
adopted as a daughter."
The following story could only have been told by a
doctor. It throws a melancholy light on one side of
family life in a polygamous society. " One day I
received a note from a Levantine lady asking me to go
to the house of a friend of hers, a great Turk, whose
child was seriously ill, and who wished to try some new
doctor. Accordingly, I soon found myself before the
garden gates of a large Turkish mansion. I knocked,
and was admitted into a small garden, neatly laid out
in the Italian style, and was passed on from servant to

94 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
servant until I reached the pasha's ante-room. Soon I
found myself in the presence of His Excellency Koort
Pasha, an ex-Minister. He was, like most pashas, ex
cessively fat, and was rolled up in a comer of his sofa
smoking his morning pipe. He greeted me with a
slight nod of the head, and beckoned me to a seat.
After coffee, I waited for some time, and presently the
pasha began : — ' There is a sick child in my house.
What is to be done ? ' ' Your servant will see and
examine the child,' I replied, ' and then I will prescribe
a remedy.' ' That won't do,' he answered ; ' you can
not see it. Write something. Its breathing is bad.
Give it something to cut the mucus.' 'I cannot,' I
answered, ' prescribe for a patient without seeing him.'
' Just at this moment a pretty little girl of six or seven
came running into the room. 'Where is the hekim
bashy? Come to the harem!' and, seizing my hand,
she pulled me towards the door. My Levantine friend
appeared at the same time, and, assuming the privilege
of her sex, began to rate the pasha soundly for standing
in the way of the doctor. The pasha saw there was no
help for it. He slowly rose, and bade me follow. In
due time we entered the harem, and after passing
through several apartments I found myself in the sick
room, where were several women, who had had time to
closely veil themselves before I appeared. One was
kneeling before a cradle ; two or three more were
huddled together on a low sofa. The patient was a
child of a year or two old, lying in an ebony cradle,
prettily carved, and mounted with silver. The infant

CONSTANTINOPLE. 95
was closely muffied up. Its chest was evidently in
flamed ; its head was bound up with handkerchiefs,
and on its forehead hung a piece of coral and a few
beads to charm away the Nazar or Evil Eye. The
figure kneeling by the cradle was its mother, and while
I examined the child she scarcely spoke ; but one of the
ladies on the sofa gave her opinions freely as to what
ought to be done, and her sympathy for the poor child
was of a much louder and more active kind than that of
the veiled figure who knelt by the cradle. The air of
the room was excessively hot and close, every draught
being excluded, and a large charcoal brazier helping to
poison the atmosphere. I gave careful directions as to
how the leeches were to be applied, and how the
medicines were to be given. Then the pasha conducted
me out. I -wrote a prescription and departed, promising
to call again in the morning. My second visit to the
poor child was not a matter of so much difficulty as the
first, but, unfortunately, I found it decidedly worse, and
in evident danger. I discovered that nothing that I
had ordered had been done. I prescribed other active
remedies, and, urging a strict attention to all I said, I
again retired from the harem. While the pasha was
preceding me at a little distance I felt my hand touched,
and turning round saw the black face of the eunuch,
who eagerly whispered to me, ' Tell him the child is
better.' Of course I told the father the real state of
the case, and he promised, with great concern, to do my
bidding ; but when I returned in the evening I found,
to my disgust, that my remedies had been neglected.

96 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
and that in my place a Dervish had been called in, who
had read portions of the Koran over the patient, after
which he had been placed on the ground to be trodden
on by the holy vagrant. When early next morning I
sent my servant to inquire after the child, the answer
given to him was ' Eulmish' ('It is dead'). The explana
tion was simple. The woman who talked so much had
been the pasha's favourite wife before he married the
mother of the child. The new wife had ousted the old
one from the affections of the pasha, and when the boy
fell ill the latter determined that he should die, and she
carried her point."
Meantime, while Sandwith was pursuing the un
eventful career of a practising doctor in Constantinople,
the way was being prepared for events of world-wide
interest. The tension between Turkey and Russia was
growing severe, and the diplomatic struggle which pre
ceded the great war was beginning. We must reserve
our brief summary of the oft-repeated story for another
chapter.

CHAPTER VII.
DRIFTING INTO WAR.
As might be expected, Sandwith's memoirs of this
period deal at great length with the political occurrences
of which Constantinople was the principal theatre.
His peculiar position as a doctor practising both among
Turks and Europeans, as a kind of unattached member

DRIFTING INTO WAR. 97
of the Embassy, intimate with all the junior diplo
matists, and admitted to some part of the confidence of
the great Eltchi himself, and during a part of the time
as correspondent of the Times newspaper, gave him
rare advantages for a study of the situation. It is not,
however, either necessary or desirable to transcribe any
very great part of what he has written. The literature
of the Crimean War is almost too voluminous already,
and the general history of the diplomatic contest which
preceded it may be read at length in the pages of Mr.
Kinglake, and of many other authorities. It will be
enough if we collect from the autobiography just so
much as will serve to refresh the memory of the reader
of to-day as to the broad outlines of the story.
The general causes of the Crimean War may be
set down under four heads : Turkish misgovernment ;
Russian ambition ; the desire of Napoleon III. to con
solidate his rule ; and the persuasion, then very general
among the people of England, that English policy
demanded the preservation of the Turkish Empire.
Besides these general causes, however, there were special
and determining causes which tended to bring the great
quarrel to an issue. Of these the most important were
the celebrated question of the Holy Places, and the
much more serious question of the Hungarian refugees.
At this distance of time we are too apt to forget the
immense interest excited throughout Europe, and
especially in England, by the Hungarian revolution and
its consequences. That revolution, as we all know, was
on the point of succeeding, and the Magyars had all but

98 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
achieved their independence, when the Emperor Nicholas
interfered on the side of the Austrian power, and poured
in an overwhelming force to destroy the armies of the
patriots. The Austrian revenge was terrible, and both
in the field and afterwards in the prison scenes were
enacted which sent a shock throughout Liberal Europe.
A large number of the leaders of the insurrection, with
Count Louis Batthyani at their head, were executed.
The rest fled for their lives, most of them taking refuge
in Turkey. Austria and Russia joined in demanding
that these men should be given up. Turkey, supported
by the strenuous declarations of Sir Stratford Canning,
temporised and hesitated, while English opinion at
home, even though it had not yet been stirred by the
¦eloquence of Kossuth — eloquence which even to this day
is described by those who heard it as almost unexampled
— strongly urged the Government to support Turkey in
-refusing the demand. At the time of Sandwith's return
from Mesopotamia, " the streets of Constantinople," he
says, " were full of these poor refugees, wandering about
in that most miserable of all conditions, eating the
bread of idleness and exile, ha^ving lost position, wealth,
and country. ... In some of the most wretched
•slums of Pera and Galata, filthy and wretched beyond
any that are to be found in European cities, there
¦existed Hungarian families who had fallen from a state
of high refinement and elegance. . . . From the
•dread of being given up to Austria, numbers became
renegades to their religion — good men and true, many of
them, but men to whom religion had always been a

DRIFTING INTO WAR. 99
matter of form, and who thought less of changing it
than of changing their costumes."
" Had our representative in Turkey," he proceeds,
" shown a less determined front, it is quite certain that
the poor Hungarians would have been delivered up to
their bloodthirsty foes ; but the wavering repugnance
felt by the Turks to this breach of hospitality was
strengthened by the urgent and constant ad-vice of Sir
Stratford Canning, pending more definite instructions
from home. Long and anxious was the suspense, while
messengers were riding horses to death over the dreary
plains of Adrianople. The momentous answer to the
anxious question was entrusted to Colonel Townley,
who with scarcely a break rode six hundred and fifty
miles, and staggered almost like a dying man into the
Constantinople Embassy -with the short announcement
that ' Her Majesty's Ministers were prepared to support
the Sultan morally and materially in his resistance to the
demands of Austria.' An attache of the Embassy flew
to the house of the Grand Vizier and bade the porter
rouse his master. The earnestness of the young Eng
lishman prevailed over the apathy and fear of the
servants, who disturbed the slumbers of the pasha, and
Reshid had the intense satisfaction of learning that the
balance was turned in favour of his humane decision."
It is clear that at this date, and for some time after
wards, there was considerable danger that Austria would
become Russia's ally in the impending war, for she was
anxious not only to punish Tm'key for refusing to sur
render the refugees, but also to strengthen the anti-

100 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
Magyar element in her Empire, by extending her power
over some of the Sclavonic subjects or tributaries of the
Sultan. It is thus that we must explain the mission of
Prince Leiningen to Constantinople in 1852, the object
of which was to stop the victorious course of Omer
Pasha, who was then employed in putting down the
insurrection in Montenegro. Leiningen's mission came
upon the Constantinople diplomatists entirely as a sur
prise. No ambassador happened to be at his post, and
business was being conducted by charges-d'affaires, who
hesitated to act on their own responsibility at so grave
a crisis, and who thus allowed the very determined
Austrian Ambassador, with his open talk of having " an
army at his back," to impose his will upon the Sultan's
Ministers. It is only necessary, however, to mention
this Leiningen mission as an example of the ferment
which existed in Constantinople in the year 1852, and
especially as it was the forerunner of the more serious
and celebrated mission of Prince Mentschikoff.
The account which Sandwith gives of this latter
is interesting, even after all that has been written
upon it. The ostensible reason for it, the reason
officially asserted both by Baron Brunnow in London
and by the Imperial Chancellor in St. Petersburg, was
the settlement of the complicated if trivial question of
the Holy Places. In answer to Sir Hamilton Seymour,
the Chancellor assured him that " an adjustment of
the difficulties respecting the Holy Places would settle
the matters in dispute between Russia and the Porte,
and that the Chancellor was not aware that Prince

DRIFTING INTO WAR. 101
Mentschikoff had any other grievances to bring forward."
Baron Brunnow was instructed to give the strongest assur
ances to the English Government, " not merely in general
terms that the Emperor's desire and determination were
to respect the independence and integrity of the Turkish
Empire, but specifically that all the idle rumours to
which the arrival of Prince Mentschikoff in the Ottoman
capital had given rise, as well as the (contemplated)
occupation of the Principalities, hostile and threatening
language to the Porte, etc., were not only exaggerated,
but even destitute of any sort of foundation ; " and
moreover, " that the mission never had, and had not
then, any object but that which had been communicated
to the British Government." The cynical manner in
which these declarations were thro-mi over when it suited
the purpose of the Emperor Nicholas, is matter of
history, but what Sandwith principally insists upon
is the fact that from the moment that the mission
was announced it was assumed in Constantinople both
by Turks and Christians that something very serious was
in the air.
" The main object of Mentschikoff"s Embassy, as
announced by the Russians, was to arrange satisfactorily
the complicated question of the Holy Places (that is,
the respective rights of the Greek and Latin Churches
to various Holy Places at and near Jerusalem); which
had been a godsend to diplomatists for some years past.
When I left Constantinople for Assyria in 1849,
General Aupic, the French Ambassador, was wrangling
with M. Titoff, the Russian Ambassador, over this bone

102 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
of contention, but when I returned to Constantinople, a
year afterwards, the graver question of the Hungarian
refugees exclusively occupied all minds. This being
over, the Holy Place papers were taken out of the
pigeon-holes, and gave the French Embassy a good deal
of occupation, and M. Benedetti, an aspiring charge-
d'affaires, an excellent opportunity to bring himself
forward." It is not every diplomatist who has had M.
Benedetti's fortune in being a prominent instigator of
two gigantic wars.
Prince Mentschikoff, then, arrived in Constantinople
on the last day of February, attended by a great suite ;
and he was received with an amount of interest on the
part of the Greek community which implied that much
more was at stake than a mere religious dispute, how
ever deep and important. " All the corps diplomatique
looked grave, and pretended to know all about the state
of affairs, but were unwilling to say a word. The
Perotes, being mostly Catholic, regarded with aversion
this heretical Embassy, which quite threw into the
shade that of the French and Austrians. But the
Greeks were wild with delight, and numbers of them
seemed to think it their duty to countenance the
Russian Eltchi by crowding round the gates of his
palace and straining to gaze through the great iron
bars. Among Perote society there was constituted a sort
of colloquial Court Journal as to the movements of the
Ambassador. The poor Sultan was quite thrown into
the shade, and no one cared to know what he was doing
and in which of his palaces he was amusing himself.

DRIFTING INTO WAR. 103
' Que fait le Prince ? ' ' Le Prince est alle a Buyukdere.'
' On dit que le Prince sera ce soir au theatre.' ' Le
Prince ' and his every movement were the objects of the
closest scrutiny and the most marvellous suggestions."
In the absence of the British Ambassador, who was
then in England, and who did not return until April,
Mentschikoff, for a time, had it all his own way, and
was able to menace the Sultan and to bully his Minis
ters to his heart's content. On more than one occa
sion, after a state interview had been arranged, he
deliberately walked past the Minister and returned to
his palace without condescending to notice him. One
Minister at least, Fuad Effendi, resigned after receiving
this treatment. " He was succeeded," says Sandwith,
" by a quiet, nervous old man, one Rifaat Pasha, an
accomplished poet and man of letters, but ignorant of
French, who had passed the greater part of his life in
enjoying himself after the calm Epicurean manner of a
respectable Turkish grandee. He was a gentlemanly
old man, allied with the family of Reshid Pasha and
others, one whose position and rank were equal to any
post, and who was not likely to quarrel with any one in
the world. A clever British dragoman found him, on
one of his visits, in an agony of terror, and oppressed
with the weight of a fearful State secret, and it required
but little skill and tact to induce the old gentleman to
pour out his fears and sorrows into the bosom of the
Pisani. It came out that Mentschikoff was doing his
u^tmost to effect a secret treaty with the Porte, in
volving the most dangerous concessions to Russia. The

104 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
chief point insisted on by the Russian Ambassador was
the most absolute secrecy; but it was one thing to
terrify an Oriental, and quite another to make him
keep his fears to himself."
While all these things were going on, a new element
of interest was added to Sandwith's life by his appoint
ment as correspondent to the Times. He had sent a
long letter to Layard, who was then in London, with a
request that he would forward it to the paper, and, as a
consequence, he was soon asked for regular contributions.
"After about two months of this sort of work," he writes,
" I received an enclosure of a hundred pounds. I shall
never forget the inexpressible delight I felt on receiv
ing this money." " In my first letter of instructions it
was said, ' It is suggested that Dr. Sandwith's letters
should be short, and should deal with facts rather than
opinions.' I did not hke the advice, and had I been
left to write at what length I pleased I should have
done better; as it was, I starved and curtailed my
letters, but I intensely enjoyed the hunting up of news,
and the position I held as the recognised Times cor
respondent." After awhile, however, Sandwith and his employers
began to fall out. It is somewhat amusing, as one
recalls the line taken both by him and by the lYmes in
the crisis of 1877-78, to find that in 1853 their places
were exactly reversed. Sandwith was young, en
thusiastic, deeply interested in Orientals and in their
life, although his eyes had been opened by his Assyrian
journey to many of the evils which Ottoman mis-

DRIFTING INTO WAR. 105
government had brought about. Again, he was on
terms of intimacy with all the offlcials of the Embassy,
and was naturally much under the influence of Lord
Stratford, who gave the tone to English policy at the
time; of Alison, the brilliant Secretary of Embassy,
who hated the Greeks and the Russians ; and of
Smythe and Hughes, who were learned Orientalists, and,
like so many others of that brotherhood, had a weak
ness for Mohammedans as such. It was natural, then,
that his views and his letters should take their colour
from the atmosphere in which he found himself, and as
the policy of the Times was to discourage the notion of
war, such views were soon found to be out of harmony
with the paper. Matters shortly came to a climax, as
will be seen from the following very characteristic letter
of Mr. Delane, which even at this distance of time will
be read with considerable interest : —
" The Times Office,
September 5th, 1853.
"Dear Sir,— "As your private communications with The Times
have hitherto been principally upon money matters, I, as the
Editor, have scarcely had occasion to write to you, and have left
any necessary correspondence in the hands of my excellent colleague
Mr. Morris.
" The tone which you have recently taken, however, compels me
to address you, for it is impossible that you should continue to
represent us if you persist in taking a line so diametrically opposed
to the interests of this country.
" As it would seem that you never take the trouble of reading
the opinions of the paper with which you correspond, I must begin
by informing you that whatever concern it may have in the well-
being of Turkey, it owes a higher duty to the people of the United
Kingdom, -who are willing to svipport Turkey so far as they conceive

106 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
it to be for tlieir interest, but acknowledge no obligation either by
treaty or by implication to shed their blood or spend their money in
its behalf. " You seem to imagine that England can desire nothing better
than to sacrifice all its greatest interests and most cherished objects
to support barbarism, the slave trade, and Islamism, when its
especial mission is to promote civilisation, freedom, aud Christianity
— all for one's love for the Turk. Pray undeceive yourself. For
political purposes we connive at the existence of the Turk. He fills a
blank in Europe — he is a barrier against a more aggressive power.
"We had rather have the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus in the hands
of King Log than King Stork, but we are not bound to the Turk by
any other tie than interest. We tolerate him, and will not permit
the Eussians to dispossess him, but we are not blind to the fact that as
a nation he is rapidly decaying, and if wq "were slow to fight for him
¦when he had more vitality, we are less than ever inclined to do so
when he is visibly fading away, and when no amount of protection
(which is as fatal as aggression) can long preserve his boasted
integrity and independence.
" Now, as you will see by this exiDlanation that we in this
country have no such sentimental feeling for the Turk as should
induce us to sacrifice ourselves at his good pleasure, to look at the
Turkish question only as it affects England and English interests, you
will perhaps understand how it is that our statesmen here consider
themselves as competent to deal -with the question — always with a
view rather to England than to Turkey — as you and the small
English clique at Constantinople.
" No doubt the Turks would willingly involve the whole world
in war^it is the natural resource and occupation of barbarians ; no
doubt the British Ambassador and the handful of English about hini
would find their importance much increased by the exertions this
country might make and the millions it might spend in behalf of
Turkey. No doubt it is very hard that Russia should occupy quasi-
Turkish Provinces, and that the Porte should not be able to turn the
jphrases of a note precisely as it pleases. But English Ministers have
at least as much reason to consider Yorkshire and Lancashire as
Moldavia and Wallachia ; and though they may feel it expedient to
protect and support the Sultan, it is not to him, but to the Queen, that
they owe their allegiance.
" I trust therefore that in future you will have the modesty to

DRIFTING INTO WAR. 107
forbear from off-hand censures upon English policy ; to devote your
whole attention to collecting and truly describing facts ; and, if you
must give opinions, to take care that they are not Turkish, but
English. " I hope to pay you a visit in the -course of the autumn,
and am, " Faithfully yours,
"John T. Delane."
A more admirable statement of the rational policy
of England it would not be easy to find. But un
happily Mr. Delane's was not the view which com
mended itself to that part of the British people which
believed in Lord Palmerston and Lord Stratford de
Redcliffe, and it was not to be expected that the rela
tions between a correspondent of Sandwith's spirit
and an Editor who could write like Mr. Delane
should long continue very friendly. In a short
time Sandwith's connection with the paper came to
an end. One or two stories which illustrate the character of
Lord Stratford may here be recorded.
"My friend Hughes had in April, 1858, a most
severe and dangerous illness, brought on by over-work
and anxiety. He lay between life and death for many
days, during which I watched him incessantly ; two or
three of the best doctors were called in consultation.
Everything that science and experience could suggest
was done, and he ultimately but very slowly recovered.
While he was so ill I used to take a daily report to
Lord Stratford. One day he said he would like to see
poor Hughes, and requested me to prepare the patient

108 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
for the visit, which was hardly necessary, since Hughes
was almost insensible. I took the Eltchi to the bed
side. ' Hughes, Hughes,' he asked, ' do you know me ? '
A grunt was all the reply. ' Oh, poor fellow ! well, we
wiU leave him,' remarked the Ambassador. On the
following day, when I called on Lord Stratford, he
anticipated me, exclaiming, ' Ah, yes I I see how it is ;
and so the poor fellow is dead ! ' ' No, indeed, sir ; he
is better,' I answered. 'You don't say sol' exclaimed
Lord Stratford ; ' well now. Dr. Sandwith, I will tell you
how that came to pass. When I saw that poor young
man yesterday, lying at the point of death, I raised my
heart to Heaven and prayed that he might recover,
and you see my prayers have been heard.'
"I related this little story to Layard, Alison, and
Sm3rthe. The latter said, ' Oh yes. His Excellency
the Ambassador sent his ultimatum to the Higher
Powers, and of course it was answered.' "
On another occasion, the Ambassador and Sandwith
were walking in the Embassy Gardens, talking of the
approaching war. Suddenly Lord Stratford stopped,
and fixing his piercing eyes on his companion, said,
" Do you know. Dr. Sandwith, that the Emperor
of Russia once dared to put a personal affront upon
Me? He little knew that the humble individual
whom he refused to receive at St. Petersburg would
one day bring him to his knees ! " This referred
to the refusal of Nicholas to receive Sir Stratford
Canning as British Minister — Sir Stratford not being a
persona grata. Sandwith was naturally horrified at this

DRIFTING INTO WAR. 109
revelation of the length to which a personal grievance
may carry a powerful man.
Meantime the Mentschikoff Mission proceeded — to
end, as all readers of history know, in the rejection by
the Porte, under the influence of England and France,
of the steadily increasing demands of Russia, and in the
departure of the Special Embassy. Preparations for
war went on. The Turkish fleet of a dozen line-of-
battle ships was towed from the Golden Horn to the
northern mouth of the Bosphorus.
" On the 80th May the Porte, in a note as temperate
as any that had yet been issued, declared its intention
of preparing for war, and on the llth June that active
little steamer the Caradoc arrived -with the news that
the Allied British and French fleets were on their
way to the Dardanelles. This movement was truly a
portentous one, and has been much criticised. We
dwellers in Constantinople had looked for it with
intense impatience, as our position in the front made
us nervously afraid of a coup de main. We knew of
great military forces gathered together in most of the
southern parts of Russia, and of a large steam force
collected in the harbour of Sebastopol, not many hours
from us ; and we knew that the Russian occupation of
the Principalities was to be expected immediately."
Diplomacy, however, was still busy, and each side
was endeavouring, though with but little hope of
success, to frame a Note which should at once suit the
Emperor of Russia and not compromise the rights of
the Sultan.

110 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
" But at this time," says Sandwith, in an interesting
passage, " two influences were at work to stir profoundly
the passions of the people. On the one hand we had
the mustering of troops, regular and irregular, and all
the exciting indications of a coming flght which appeal
to the combative instincts of even the most civilised ;
how much more then to those of the semi-barbarous,
who have never heard the theory of non-resistance ! On
the other hand, it was notorious that the rulers of the
nation had put themselves entirely in the hands of the
Frank Ambassadors, who were doing their utmost to
prevent war, and who, it seemed to them, were probably
betraying the Sultan. Why should they not ? Were
they not the natural enemies of Islam? So that on the
receipt of another note, and yet another, then on the
issue of orders to Omer Pasha not to advance, the deep
undercurrent of emotion became most dangerous, and all
the more so since it was not, as with us, expressed by public
meetings; resolutions, and petitions. While we beheld
strange warriors from the depths of Asia strutting
through the streets, and gazing with stupid wonder on
the marvels of the city, we had to suffer the uneasiness
of those who expect an earthquake, the mutterings of
which were heard from time to time. Now we were
told of inflammatory sermons in a certain mosque ; a
day or two afterwards some headless bodies were seen in
the Bosphorus in that neighbourhood. On another
occasion I well remember visiting at night the British
Embassy, and seeing the most manifest perturbation on
every diplomatic countenance. So struck was I with

DRIFTING INTO WAR. Ill
these ominous appearances that I actually was guilty of
the indiscretion of exclaiming, ' What is the matter ? '
though I bit my tongue almost ere the words were
out of my mouth. Of course I was snubbed, and
assured that nothing was the matter. As in these
troublous times my own skin ran an equal risk with
those of the diplomatists, the urgency of the occasion
broke down all prescriptive reverence for diplomacy, and
I conceived an earnest desire to solve the mystery. So
bidding my friends good-bye, I lost no time in making
every inquiry, and collecting and reasoning upon the
sundry hints and movements. I then learned that a
vast conspiracy, headed by MoUahs and Softas, had been
discovered, the object of which was a sudden rising, the
murder of the Sultan, the proclamation of Abdul Aziz,
the Sultan's brother, as Padishah, and the declaration
of a Holy War. The Government, however, had timely
intimation of the conspiracy, and the measures taken
were most effective. Captain Drummond and Lord
John Hay laid their vessels so that there could be no
butchery of the Franks in Pera. That night passed off
quietly, and the morning sun rose upon tranquil streets,
for no general alarm followed, and I believe the people
never knew the danger that had gone by. War
steamers were constantly mo-ving, so that any changes
in their disposition ceased to be noticed, and reports
were so rife and so little attended to that the real truth,
even if it had oozed out, would probably have been
classed among those Greek canards with which we were
supplied in abundance."

112 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
As war became more and more certain, Constanti
nople came to present a more and more curious
spectacle. It was, as Sandwith says, the seat of every
species of intrigue, personal and political. "As you
walked along the streets you might well wonder where
all the new faces came from, and what their owners
wanted. All the military adventurers of Europe were
crowded into Pera, offering their swords to the Sultan.
Perhaps the strangest and most audacious of these was
one who took the name and style of a Prince, to whom
no title came amiss, from that of Wales to those of
Anjou and Navarre. He was a fine, tall, and indeed
gigantic fellow, most imposing in appearance, and he
aimed at nothing less than the command of the
armies of the Sultan. His face was by no means
so imposing as his form, for it was marked by
low cunning and the signs of weak intellect. Him
self an Englishman, he had picked up a starving
French petty officer from the streets of Pera, and
appointed him his aide-de-camp on condition that he
should serve him as interpreter, not be pressing for
his pay, and believe in His Royal Highness ; and to
see the serious face of the aide-de-camp when he spoke
of ' Mon Prince,' one might really persuade oneself
that he fulfilled the last condition. The Prince showed
so much ignorance of the world as to believe that
Turkey would accept a man whom no Ambassador
owned, and who brought no credentials ; however, he
Hved handsomely, first at Messeeri's Hotel, and after
wards at several others, descending in the grade of

DRIFTING INTO WAR. US
respectability, until, wonderful to relate, he appeared at
each and all of his creditors' with a bag of sovereigns,
and paid his debts in full. At one time he actually
proposed to Reshid Pasha to burn the allied fleets in
Besika Bay, just at the time when he supposed the
Turks to be groaning under the pressure of their
tyrannical allies. Reshid made the Prince give the
plan in writing, and on Lord Stratford's next interview
enjoyed the horror and astonishment of the Ambassador
at this notable .plan of a free-born British subject.
The Prince disappeared soon after this proposal.*
" The gates of the Seraskierat were besieged by a
curious crowd of applicants — grey-bearded officers who
had held more or less genuine commissions under native
Indian Princes ; others who had fought in the wars
interminable of South America ; unlucky youths who
had carried practical jokes too far in the dull garrison ;
and half-flighty scientific men who promised to de
stroy whole armies or poison entire garrisons by some
infernal gases or asphyxiating shells.
" Besides these there were men of European celebrity
who came to offer their services. About this time I
was introduced to the Hungarian General Klapka,
whose military talents might have proved of inestimable
value had his offers been accepted — had he, for example,
been placed in command of the army of Asia, and well
supported by men and money. Such conditions, how
ever, are seldom fulfilled in the best organised states,
* For a sketch of this character see " The Roving Englishman in
Turkey," p. 106.
I

114 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
and least of all' in Oriental countries. The command
of the army of Asia was a splendid piece of patronage,
which no Minister was patriotic enough to forego for
the sake of a foreigner ; but even had the plan been
adopted which really was put in practice when too late,
viz., that of sending an obedient old cipher like Vassif
Pasha as Commander-in-Chief, with Klapka as adviser,
as Colonel Williams was sent out some months later, it
probably would have failed through the insubordination,
intrigue, and peculation of the Turkish superior
offlcers." At last, in the beginning of November, the allied
fleets then lying in Besika Bay were summoned to the
capital, and twenty line-of-battle ships passed one by
one into the waters of the City of the Sultan. "A
vast crowd of Greeks and Turks -witnessed their ap
proach, and as each vessel appeared the name of her
nationality was repeated from mouth to mouth in the
various languages of Europe and Asia. For many days
the echoes of the hills were from time to time awakened
by the thunders of the artillery which saluted each new
arrival, and every day new crowds of gazers assembled
to watch the advent of the vast naval forces which
came to protect the capital." It need hardly be
remarked that the presence of the vessels brought a
new' sense of security to the Frankish population of
Constantinople, The winter was gay ; French and English officers
only asked for the moment to be amused. The opera
was never more brilliant, and the gloom seemed to

DRIFTING INTO WAR. 115
lighten in the streets of Pera. As yet the policy of
England was in grave doubt, for neither the Ministry
nor the unofflcial leaders of public opinion could make
up their minds to embark upon a distant and costly war
on behalf of Turkey. The admirals themselves did not
exactly understand in what position they and their
fleets were present. Diplomacy was perplexed; and the
bearing and conversation of the rich Greeks presented a
curious paradox. The presence of the Allies of Turkey
only encouraged them in their anti- Turkish attitude, for
they knew well that the fleets would protect them from
the danger of an outbreak of indignant fanaticism.
As might be expected, the conduct of the common
sailors and soldiers, when they were allowed ashore, was
such as to perplex and scandalise the Turks, and it was
only with difflculty that collisions between the East and
the West were prevented. " Never, I suppose," writes
Sandwith, " since the Osmanlis were a nation, had they
been more astonished or scandalised by the manners of
the Franks than since the arrival of the fleets. Not many
days after their entrance into the Bosphorus leave was
granted to several hundred blue-jackets, who at once
swarmed amongst the streets of the city, full of the
exuberant rough jollity of the British sailor off duty. I
remember that a highly respectable MoUah, full of the
sanctity of a life spent in the study of the Koran, as he was
riding gravely on an ass along the streets, saluted by true
believers, was suddenly conscious of one of these unclean
infldels mounted behind him, and presently found him
self bareheaded, his fresh white turban crossing the head

116 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
of an audacious Ghiaour. ' Allah ! Allah ! ' exclaimed
the MoUah, ' Islam is surely under the frown of the
All-Merciful ! ' But by degrees the Turks began to
find that the practical jokes which at first were mis
taken for grave outrages were but the ebullitions of -wild
animal spirits in a rude people from a distant country ;
and a grave and learned Mussulman explained to his
audience ' that the Padishah, the Caliph, the Vicegerent
of the Prophet, upon whom be peace, having summoned
these tributaries from the West to aid him in defending
his Capital, it became the duty of true believers to bear
with their wild and drunken frolics, and to treat them
with indulgence ! ' "
Oriental impassiveness prevailed over curiosity, and
even the arrival of the Highlanders with the other
troops, in April, 1854, caused but little excitement
among the Turkish population. The Greeks, however,
were a good deal perplexed at much that they -witnessed.
" I saw," said Sandwith's Greek servant to him, " I saw
in the barracks that a quarrel between two soldiers was
impending, for the men's gestures showed that they were
abusing one another. But this did not last long. They
suddenly stayed their tongues and proceeded to undress,
all but their trousers, while their comrades stood in a ring
around them. I then thought I had been mistaken, and
that they were about to dance the Romaika, or some
such war-dance, or at most to engage in a wrestling
match, for they had laid aside their bayonets, and were
unarmed. Moreover, they sat on a knee offered
them each by a comrade. Suddenly they stood up, and

DRIFTING INTO WAR. 117
began to beat each other with their clasped hands.
Holy Virgin ! what blows were those ! They were even
as a hammer on the anvil at the forge of the smith.
And the blood flowed from nose and mouth, and bruises
were seen on their naked skins. Yet strange to say,
their comrades interfered not, nor fought with each
other — no, they stood and encouraged the combatants.
Neither did they bring arms to them ; and yet there
were arms at hand — at least there were stones ; or they
might have snatched a dagger from the belt of many
an one standing by. At last one of these English
palikaris fell. Water was brought, and he recovered.
I stiU. Hngered to see the end, and well it was I did so,
for I saw what I never could have believed, for when
the wounded man arose and began to stand upright,
the other man came forward, and I felt sick to see
them recommence their bloody fight. But, Holy St.
Nicholas ! what was my astonishment when I saw
them — yes, -with these eyes I saw them both shake
hands and become friends again. Now, tell me, what is
this ? Were these men paid combatants, and were they
real friends? Or will not the wounded man and his
friends do some injury to the conqueror? "
It was not long before a decisive event came to
precipitate the war. " On the afternoon of the 2nd
December," Sandwith writes, "as I was preparing to
pay a visit to Therapia, and with that view had
descended the Galata HUl, and was waiting on the
bridge, I observed a Turkish war-steamer suddenly turn

118 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
the corner from the Bosphorus and enter the harbour of
the Golden Horn, at the mouth of which she cast
anchor. There was nothing at all unusual in this, but
at that moment we were on the qui vive for information,
and I thought she might have brought news from the
Danube, or from Asia. While looking with interest
on this new arrival, my eyes were attracted by some
thing strange about her appearance. Her hull was
assuredly dotted with shot-holes here and there, and
some parts of her rigging had been carried away. She
had been, then, in a fight ; probably she had been
chased by a Russian ; or perhaps had been reconnoitring
a fort on the coast of Circassia. Certainly she had
had some interesting experience, so I put off in a boat
to hear the news." The steamer, pierced with shot,
her rigging torn, and her deck covered with wounded,
was the sole vessel that had escaped from the surprise
and massacre of Sinope.
It is not necessary to tell the story of the events
that followed. It is sufficient to say that when war
had been declared, and when the allied forces proceeded
to Varna in May, 1854, Sandwith shortly followed
them.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE DANUBE.

The capacity in which he went was that of staff-
surgeon to General Beatson, an Indian officer of reputa
tion, who had volunteered to organise a force of Bashi-

THE DANUBE. 119
bazouks to operate upon the Danube. Beatson had
submitted his plans both to the Turkish Government,
who heard them with the usual polite nonchalance, and
to the British Foreign Minister and Lord Stratford,
both of whom looked favourably upon the idea. He
met Sandwith in Pera, and there and then engaged
him, both being well pleased with the arrangement,
which gave to the one the adventurous experience
of which he was in search, and to the other a good
surgeon who knew Turkish and could act as interpreter.
They left Constantinople for Varna on the 24th June.
" Nothing," says Sandwith, " could exceed my joyous
feeling when I threw overboard that emblem of city
life, my hat, and donned in its place a forage cap."
Unluckily, on their arrival at Varna, where the allied
forces were already encamped, they very soon discovered
that their position was singular and unsatisfactory.
" We were appointed," he writes, " by the Foreign
Office, because our troops were to be foreign, but under
whose supreme command was not at that time very clear.
We, however, supposed and hoped that we were to be part
of the British army, and I do not hesitate to say that
had we then and there formed a choice body of Bashi-
Bazouks and embarked for the Crimea with the English
force, these hardy, watchful troops would have proved
of inestimable value in saving the British cavalry from
a service which destroyed it, and in acting as vedettes
and outposts. They would have been our Cossacks,
and would probably have prevented the surprise at
Inkerman." But neither the French nor the English

120 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
authorities took to the plan. The French attempt to
organise such a body under General Yussuf came to
nothing ; and Lord Raglan, never very ready to adopt a
new idea, was not to be persuaded to employ irregulars.
By Sandwith's own showing, the look of Beatson's men
was not such as to tempt Lord Raglan, for he proceeds :
— "A more unpromising set of ragamufflns could not
have been found throughout the world. They v^rere
the sweepings of Asia, and many of them were religious
vagrants from India, Khorassan, Bokhara, Persia, and
sundry provinces of the Turkish Empire. All Mussul
man countries swarm with such restless spirits, and if
a war be declared anywhere they are always ready to
join an army for the sake of rations and plunder."
General Beatson then determined to push forward
and seek the support of Omer Pasha, who was then at
Rustchuk. They proceeded, not in the best of spirits,
but very much confirmed in their views of the necessity
of a large organised body of irregulars by the sight of
the melancholy condition of Lord Cardigan's cavalry
whom they met returning from a reconnaissance on the
Danube. The fine English horses were tied to bullock-
carts, and were slowly and painfully limping into camp.
Not far off were some Turkish cavalry, which had done
tvvrice as much work without a single sore back. They
passed, through a country almost deserted, towards
Shumla, meeting here and there stray bodies of armed
men, and caravans of miserable fugitives, and presently
found themselves among a motley gathering of Arab,
Albanian, Kurdish, Egyptian, and Turkish soldiers, who

THE DANUBE. 121
were moving about in the streets of Shumla. During the
rest of his stay Sandwith amused himself with talking
with these men, and especially with chatting on familiar
themes with natives of Van, Bitlis, and Mosul. At a
rude extemporised hotel he met with campaigners of
another sort — Lord Cardigan, his rich uniform covered
with the dust of his reconnaissance, and several other
English and French soldiers. A curious little story
that he tells is worth recording here as an example of
the strange incidents with which war makes a man
familiar. " While we were dining," he says, " I
observed two French offlcers enter and take their seats
at a table somewhat apart from the rest. One of these
was a fine, bronzed, soldierly man of about five-and-
twenty, and the other a delicate-looking youth of short
•stature, and singularly beautiful features. They wore a
cavalry uniform, but as far as I could judge it appeared
to be one of those not belonging to any particular corps,
but merely worn for the purpose of marking their
nationality and profession, so I set them down as
military adventurers. I could not but call the attention
of my companion to the handsome face of the younger
offlcer — too young, indeed, for the rough life he had
entered on. A peculiar and sagacious smile followed the
inspection which my friend made, and he whispered into
my ear, " It is a woman." I wish that I could have
brought the fact to the notice of a young offlcer who
was beginning the campaign — Whyte Melville. It
would have served him well for his next novel."
Arrived at Rustchuk, the general and his surgeon

122 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
both had interviews with Omer Pasha, who captivated.
Sandwith by his urbane and un- Turkish manners.
From the last interview with the Commander-in-Chief,
General Beatson came forth radiant; he had been
appointed, so he told Sandwith, to the command of a.
large force of regular and irregular cavalry stationed at
Turtokai, whither they were to proceed at once. " On
hearing the good news," Sandwith writes, "I tried to
look as pleased as possible ; but having already gauged
our position, and knowing that the Turks must have
observed that we were not recognised by the British
Commander, I feared that I should find Omer
Pasha's order to be a kind of mauvaise plaisanterie."
Of course nothing of the kind was hinted, and they
pushed on to Turtokai, having at one point to run the
gauntlet of the fire of some Russian sharpshooters posted
in a wood just across the Danube. At Turtokai
Sandwith's worst anticipations were realised. The town,.
which had been thriving and rapidly improving, was
completely depopulated, and was half in ruins. A miser
able creature, by name Ali Pasha, looking more like a.
broken-down pawnbroker than a soldier, was in command, .
and when, after much insisting on Beatson's part, the
troops were at last drawn up for inspection, they
proved to be truly a Falstafflan band of scarecrows, not .
three hundred in number, and not one in six of them
provided with any kind of firearm. But though such a,
body was quite useless for war, the staff-surgeon found
among them plenty of demands upon his medical skill..
At least half the force was sick, fever being especially

THE DANUBE. 123
prevalent ; and Sandwith had now for the first time in
his life an opportunity for the display of that genius
for the care of the wounded of which he afterwards gave
such conspicuous evidence at Kars, at Metz, in Servia,
and again on these very Bulgarian plains.
" There was no hospital," he writes, " and no
medicine except that contained in a small medicine
chest which I had brought for the use of our staff of
half-a-dozen Englishmen. The medicines in this chest
comprised those most active and essential, and these
are, comparatively speaking, but seldom necessary,
especially to one like myself, who is sparing in the use
of active remedies, and most averse to interfere with the
healing efforts of nature. I consulted with General
Beatson as to what was best to be done, and he seconded
my efforts most warmly and energetically, even to the
spending of his own money, so while he despatched a
man to Rustchuk to purchase a quantity of caUco and
sundry pots and pans, I proceeded to clear out a mosque
and to cut and dry a quantity of grass. In the com-se of
two or three days a couple of horse-loads of calico arrived,
and having discovered some fellows handy with the
needle, we made a number of beds stuffed with the hay
that we had prepared, and these we arranged round the
floor of the mosque, which at once assumed the
character of a not uncomfortable hospital. Having thus
prepared a number of beds, I began to look up my
numerous patients. At first I found some difficulty in
persuading the poor creatures to enter the hospital, but
in two or three days my chief difflculty was over-

124 'HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
crowding. My assistant, the Armenian Samanji, was
most active in bleeding, dressing wounds, giving such
food as was ordered, and such medicines as we could
supply. Where, however, were these to be found ?
Quinine was what was most wanted. But I really had
not more of this precious drug than might be required
by our o-wn staff, campaigning in that most unhealthy
country ; and as I reckoned one English gentleman worth
fifty Bashi-bazouks, I could not, except in very rare cases,
afford to give my patients quinine. However, I took
into consideration their original hardihood of constitu
tion, their present comfort, their regular diet, and their
nursing (for I had impressed and paid several Bashi-
bazouk nurses), and I calculated that milder bitters than
quinine would be useful. So putting my botanical
knowledge (by no means great) to the test, I went
herbalising over the fields, choosing the bitter plants
belonging to those natural orders that are innocuous.
Moreover, I gathered sundry narcotics, such as
hyoscyamus and other herbs, with which I made
poultices and fomentations, and thus I found a
tolerable pharmacy amongst the meadows of the
Danube, that were teeming -with the richest vegetation.
The neighbouring marshes, too, supplied me -with
leeches. After all, the best test of such experiments is
the result, and I never had more success than amongst
these poor Bashi-bazouks, nor did I ever meet with
liveher expressions of gratitude."
The few weeks which were passed at Turtokai were
almost uneventful, except as regards such professional

THE DANUBE. 125
occupations as these. The Bashi-bazouks did nothing
in a military sense, and were called upon to do nothing,
while the only show of life that came from the other side
of the Danube consisted of an occasional shot from the
concealed Russian riflemen. There were now and then
engagements of another kind between General Beatson
and his shabby coadjutor, Ali Pasha, which generally
ended in the General's abusing the Pasha in a mixture
of English and Hindustani, which Sandwith, as the
only Turkish scholar present, had to paraphrase as best
he could into terms of Constantinopolitan invective.
Finally an order came from Omer Pasha that the
corps should move on to Silistria, -with a view to pro
ceeding into the Dobrudscha, to report upon the move
ments of the Russians in that province. Those whose
memories of this war are active -will recollect that just
before this time a French expedition had been conducted
into this region by General Espinasse, with results that
could only be compared -with those of the iU-fated
Walcheren expedition, undertaken by England in the
year 1809. The French soldiers had been destroyed
wholesale by the most virulent endemic fever, and no
good result whatever had been attained by the adventure.
It may be imagined that Omer Pasha's order was not
received -with feelings of pleasure by Beatson and his
staffl But there was nothing for it except to obey, and
the march immediately began, Sandwith being compelled,
to his great regret, to leave a few of his invalids in the
mosque hospital, to be tended by the few remaining
citizens of Turtokai.

126 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
They reached Silistria in due course, and there
Sandvdth had his first striking experience of the horrible
effects of war. The siege, which Gortschakoff" had con
ducted, had lately been raised, after costing the invaders
enormous sacrifices in men ; and, as English people well
remember, the chief glory of the successful defence had
fallen to two Englishmen — Butler, who feU in the
moment of victory, and Nasmyth, an Indian artillery
offlcer, whom Sandwith describes as " one of the greatest
and truest heroes of the war. The whole aspect of
the town," he says, " spoke of war in its most terrible
form. Several mosques were in ruins, huge holes were
broken into the domes, and the minarets were either
struck off or drilled with shot holes. Every house
in the place had suffered more or less ; sometimes
we came upon streets entirely consumed by fire; at
other times a shell had blown off a roof." Another
effect of the war, moreover, was present, for the
cholera was raging among the troops when Beatson
arrived at Silistria; but fortunately none of the staff
suffered. At Silistria they received information that Lord
Raglan had set his face against the employment of
Bashi-bazouks, and that, consequently, Beatson's corps
was to be at once disbanded, to the great disgust not only
of Beatson himself, but of offlcers experienced in Turkish
warfare, who held that if proper measures were taken a
good corps of irregular horsemen might be made out of
them. They pushed on to Varna, and there learned
that Lord Raglan's decision was final, and consequently

THE DANUBE. 127
Sand-with was forced to look for employment elsewhere.
" On the following morning," he writes, " I rode about
the town picking up news, and I heard that General
Burgoyne wished to make me chief interpreter to his
staff. I determined to decline the appointment. I next
heard that Colonel Williams had been appointed Her
Majesty's Commissioner with the army in Asia, and had
applied for me to accompany him. When I heard this,
my heart bounded with pleasure. ' That is the place
for me ! ' I exclaimed, for I reflected that in Asia, away
from this crowd of Europeans, and amongst people whose
language I knew, I should really be in my element, and
should have a chance of distinguishing myself. It
might, however, be too late, for I was told that when
Williams heard that I had taken ser-vice under Beatson,
he expressed regret, and sought for another surgeon.
However, there was still a chance, and I inquired when
the next mail was to go to Constantinople. This was
Monday, and no mail was to leave till Friday. I
was horrified. Nevertheless, I went into an offlcer's
room and asked permission to write a letter. This letter
was to Colonel Williams, telling him that I had left
General Beatson's staff (for I had fully intended to
do so) and that I -wished to take service wdth him.
Then, riding through the town, I happened to meet
some sailors with Betributioji on their hats. I stopped
them. ' Is the Betribution here ? ' ' Yes, sir.' ' When
does she leave ? ' ' This afternoon at three, sir,'
'Where for?' 'Constantinople, sir.' 'Then give
Captain Drummond this letter, and ask him to forward

128 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
it immediately.'* The letter was addressed to Skene,
and was forwarded to Williams, whom it caught in the
nick of time. I was appointed, and this accident of
meeting the Betribution' s men I have always regarded
as the corner-stone of my fortunes."
Sandwith pushed on by the first mail-boat, and
on his arrival at Constantinople learned that Colonel
WiUiams had appointed him, but that he had left for
Erzeroum, whither Sandwith was to follow. He left-
Constantinople on Sunday, September 10th, and by
rapid travelling reached Erzeroum on the 19th, to find
Colonel Williams and Major Teesdale just leaving for
Kars. It was on the day of his landing at Trebizond
that the Crimean campaign opened in grim earnest with
the Battle of the Alma.

CHAPTER IX.
KARS.
A LONG time was to elapse before the commencement of
active operations between the armies of Williams and
Moui-avieff. Five weeks before Sandwith's arrival at
Erzeroum, the Turkish army of Anatolia, under Zarif
Mustafa Pasha, had met the Russians under Bebutoff
* Captain Drummond was a very good friend of Sandwith's, and his
ship, the Retribution, was often heard of during the war. She was
within au ace of foundering in the great storm which wrecked seven
Enghsh steam transports, and two French men-of-war, a few days aft«r
the Battle of Inkerman. The Duke of Cambridge was on board at
the time.

KARS. 129
at Kurukdere, a village between Bayazid and Erzeroum,
and though the Tui-ks outnumbered their opponents by
two to one, they had been totally defeated, the defeat,
accordiug to an English eye-witness, being due to the
disgraceful conduct of four-fifths of the Turkish officers
and to the downright cowardice of a great, portion of the
troops. Yet for some mysterious reason the Russians
allowed their beaten enemy to escape, and to entrench
themselves at Kars, where in due time the influence of
a few able and devoted British officers was destined to
convert a disorganised rabble into an army capable of
defeating their former conquerors in action, and of
enduring the extremity of famine in defence of the city.
"It is still a mystery to me," writes Sandwith in 1856,
" how it was that the Russians did not make a bold
forward movement (immediately after Kurukderd) and
annihilate this demoralised, miserable army. I suppose
General Bebutoff was acting according to orders from
St. Petersburg, when he remained passively on the
defensive, and neglected the rare opportunity offered to
him of marching to the destruction of an already dis
organised army, and to the easy conquest of the im-
jDortant positions of Kars and Erzeroum."
Whatever may have been the reason, the British
Commissioner, on his arrival in Armenia, found that a
Turkish army still existed, and he at once set to work to
make the best of it. He saw that two things had first
to be done ; that Kars and Erzeroum must be put
materially into a state of defence, and, what was of
still more importance, that the morale of the force

130 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
must be restored by the introduction of a discipline to
which all, from the pashas to the privates, must bow.
Much has been written since those days of the system
of peculation and fraud which prevailed at that time in
the Turkish army, and which is by no means extinct yet.
It is enough to say that of all the di-visions of the
Sultan's forces there was none into which this canker
had penetrated so deeply as into the army of Armenia.
Sandwith's description in his book, " The Siege of Kars,"
written, it must be remembered, -with no political object,
and -with the sole intention of representing in a truthful
manner the facts of the situation, is an indictment of
the blackest kind. The only organisation, he declares,
that prevaUed in the army was the organisation of
plunder, whereby every authority, from the great people
at Constantinople down to the baker who made the
regiment's bread, regarded the supplies as so much spoil
of which he was entitled to a recognised and graduated
share. General WilHams was the very man to deal
with such a state of things. He had been employed
during the greater part of his life amongst Orientals,
and for many years among Turks. He therefore
knew perfectly weU their idiosyncrasies, and how to
manage them. He did not neglect the formalities to
which Turkish officials are accustomed, but he cut them
as short as possible, and was apt to get to business in a
manner which distressed his Oriental friends.* When
he was reviewing a certain regiment, the muster-roll was
presented to him with nine hundred names upon it ; he
• " Siege of Kars," p. 130.

KARS. 131
had the men counted, and found that but six hundred
were there ; and the colonel was at once made aware that
the British Commissioner knew that the pay and rations
of three hundred men had been fraudulently drawn to
enrich him and the other officers. Even before General
WiUiams was appointed " Ferik," or Lieutenant-General
in the Sultan's forces, with the rank of pasha, he had
determined somewhat to exceed his powers as British
Commissioner. In that capacity he would merely have
the right of reporting what he saw to Constantinople,
but, as Sandwith remarks, had he confined himself to
this duty, it is probable that there would have been no
Ottoman army in the ensuing campaign. He at once*
interfered, thereby committing a breach of etiquette, but
sa-ving Asia Minor. He would tell these corrupt officers
that he had found them out ; would expose them in the
presence of one another ; would insist upon knowing the
amount of rations issued ; would personally inspect the
camp kitchens and the food of the troops ; and by per
sisting in this course, he not only won the devotion of
the soldiery and of the citizens both of Kars and
Erzeroum, but he brought the officers to their knees, and
rapidly succeeded in terrorising them into something
like honesty. One interesting incident that is recorded
by Sandwith is worth quotation, as sho-wing how
under decent treatment even the crouching Armenian
Christians could be won over to take an active part in
the defence of the Sultan's dominions. WiUiams caUed
some of the Christian citizens of Erzeroum together,
put spades into their hands, appealed to them as men and

132 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
citizens, and bade them go work on the fortifica
tions. On hearing such an address, the Archbishop
started up, and exclaimed, " 0 English pasha, we
are your sacrifice. We -wiU work, dig, fight, and die
for you ; since we are no longer dogs, no longer
ghiaours, but, though Christians, fellow-citizens and
free men."*
We have said that Williams arrived at Erzeroum in
September, 1854. The battle of Kurukdere had been
fought on the 5th August, and an advance on the part
of the Russians was still expected. As the weeks went
on, however, it became evident that no operations would
be attempted that winter, so that time was given to
complete the fortifications of Kars under Colonel Lake,
the able Engineer officer who was the senior member of
WilHams's staff. Sandwith accompanied Williams to
Kars very soon after their arrival at Erzeroum, but in a
short time both of them, seeing that active hostilities
had ceased for the present, returned to the latter city.
It was in the month of January, 1855, that the
important step was taken by the Porte, at the instance
of the British Government, of granting to General
Williams the rank and authority of a lieutenant-general
in the Sultan's army. The event was, as Sandwith
remarks, significant in more ways than one. In the
first place, it conferred upon Williams the real command
of the army of Anatolia, and in the second it was the
first instance in Turkish history of the admission of a
Christian officer to the Sultan's service under his own
* " Siege of Kars," p. 231.

KARS. 133
infidel name. Till then it had been the rule neither
to give to these Christian officers a Mussulman name,
nor to aUow them to retain their Frank names, but
generaUy to bestow upon them some Persian appellation
of a more or less metaphorical character. The appoint
ment of WiUiams in this special manner was an indi
cation that the British interference in the affairs of
Turkey had decidedly advanced a stage.
In February, while at Erzeroum, General WilUams
appointed Sandwith Inspector-General of Hospitals.
He found himself at the head of a staff of about fifty
persons — physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries, the
two latter classes being entirely ignorant, while the
physicians, men of various nations, were some of them
not altogether men of contemptible abilities or acquire
ments. As usual, faction and intrigue were strongly
at work, and it was some time before Sand-with was
able to overcome the habits of insubordination in which
these men had been brought up. As far as stores were
concerned, his description is pathetically ludicrous.
" They were," he writes, " a marvel and a phenomenon.
Here we were, in the heart of Armenia, and when I
inspected the drug depot I found cosmetics, aromatic
vinegar, eau-de-luce, scents, and other dainties and
medicines de luxe, besides sundry instruments destined
for the infirmities of ladies in an interesting condition ;
but the medicines really necessary for the use of an
army in the field were scarcely to be found, and the
few that did exist were of the most worthless description.
. An individual — one Della Sudda, an Italian —

134 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
had been for years past the purveyor of the medical
department, who, -without let or hindrance, had furnished
the army with the sweepings of the shops of Constan
tinople, damaged goods, worthless articles, old-fashioned
instruments, and other unmarketable commodities, were
by him bought up wholesale at a nominal rate, and
delivered to the Government at the highest tariff."
It was clearly not an easy task to remedy this state of
things, but by the help of General Williams, " the
terror of pashas, large and smaU," a good deal was
accomplished. Ambulances were made, horses and
mules were purchased, discipUne and order were intro
duced, and, what was almost more important than all,
Sandwith set to work, as he had done on the banks of
the Danube, to utilise the resources of the country and
make himself independent of Constantinople. He found
an excellent pharmacopoeia made expressly for the
use of the Ottoman forces, which, "under the foster
ing care of the drug-purveyor, had been neglected
and forgotten. The use of water dressings, the greatest
modern improvement in surgery, and of charcoal, the
best preservative against hospital gangrene, soon took
the place of stimulating unguents, hot poultices, and
complicated bandages." " General Williams," he adds,
" was never for a moment inattentive to a request of
mine. Thus, sanitary measures were the order of the
day; and I may anticipate so far as to observe that
during the whole siege of Kars we never had an
epidemic of typhus, nor did that enemy of surgery,
hospital gangrene, ever appear. Neither, in that out-

KARS. 135
post of civilisation, had we ever, untU the last three
days, a single patient -without a bed."
It was on the 2nd June that WUliams and his staff
left Erzeroum for Kars, a courier having arrived from
Colonel Lake on the preceding day -with the news that
the Russians were threatening the city. From the
messengers whom they met on the road it was easy to
see that there were divided counsels in Kars, the
Turkish authorities being evidently unwilling to fall in
with the determination of Colonel Lake to hold the/
city. But when they arrived on the 7th, and saw the
strong system of fortifications with which that officer
had surrounded it, WiUiams was more than confirmed
in his resolve, and was encouraged to believe not only
that he could overcome the apathy of the Pashas, but
also that he could detain and defeat the Russians. The
danger lay in the want of provisions and of ammunition,
the former need being greatly due to a stupid Turkish
blunder, through which a vast depot of corn had been
left at Yenikeui, a long day's march from the city. It
was impossible to reach and transport these stores, and
as a matter of fact the Russians very soon swooped down
upon them and burned them. As to the fortifications.
Lake had done wonders in the few months during which
he had been at work. " The Turks," he writes in his
own account of the matter, " who fight proverbiaUy
weU on the defensive, and especially behind earthworks,
are singularly ignorant and unskilful in fortification.
The position of Kars is strong, and to some extent
tenable, but in 1828 they surrendered it to Prince

136 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
Paskiewitch in three days. In the condition in which
we found it, it is questionable whether they could have
held it for three hours. . . With the able assistance
of Captain Thompson, I did all in my power to render
the place impregnable."* That is to say, he had fortified
the hills which run from east to west behind the city,
and which completely command it ; he had built a most
formidable closed fort on a position to the west of Kars;
and he had drawn breastworks, with occasional redoubts,
along the hills on the north, and also, in a very ex
tended line, along the southern plain. The strength of
these fortifications was soon put to the test, and they
justified the confidence of their engineer.
General WUUams arrived in the nick of time, for
two days after he reached Kars the scouts announced
that the Russians, to the number of forty thousand,
were -within five leagues, and were steadily advancing.
The troops and the inhabitants of the city were ready
for the fray, the soldiery having recovered much of the
confidence which had been shaken at Kurukdere, and
the citizens being anxious to put themselves under the
orders of Williams Pasha, and to fight to the death.
One Osman Agha, a grey-headed inhabitant of the
to-wn, called on the General to teU him of their -willing
ness to do battle, and to appeal to him against the
civil pasha, who insulted and discouraged them. They
wanted to be put under proper command, and to be told
where to fight. " InshaUah ! We will bring scores of
Ghiaours' heads, and lay them at your feet, Veeliams
* " Kars, and our Captivity in Eussia," p. 5.

<JiARS. 137
Pasha." The General deprecated such a manner of
fighting, but promised them plenty of work, and their
pay in due season. " Wallah ! " cried the old man,
" We want no pay ; give the money to the Nizam (the
regular soldiers) ; we are Karsli ; we fight for our
rehgion and our harems, not for pay. Give us am
munition and chiefs, and, Inshallah, you -will not find a
coward among us." *
It is not necessary to describe the details of the
siege, which only repeat those of every other blockade.
Each day brought its regular routine of work ; -visits to
the sentries, and to the hospitals ; sometimes a skirmish
with an outpost of the enemy ; the discovery of some
contractor's rascality here, and, as time went on, of a
spy or a deserter there ; an occasional alarm, and again
a subsidence into the dull monotony of a beleaguered
city. The blockade was completed about the middle of
July, up to which time it had been possible for
WilUams to receive a few occasional reinforcements of
Lazistan riflemen and others^ — reinforcements which
were of doubtful value, seeing that if they brought arms
to fight with they also brought mouths to be fed.
Practically, no fresh supplies came in at all ; and when
once the investment was complete, it became a question
whether besiegers or besieged could hold out the longer,
and whether any effort would be made on the part of
the Government at Constantinople to send a relieving
force. By the middle of September matters had become
serious ; desertions were frequent, the short allowance
* " Siege of Kars," p. 248.

138 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
of food was beginning to tell on the health of the city
and of the troops, the horses were almost aU dying of
starvation. On September 8th there came the news
that Omer Pasha was landing with forty thousand men
near Batoum, and on the same day a large dep6t of
corn was discovered that had been hidden by a rascally
official. The hopes of the garrison went up ; they were
fully persuaded, both from the news of Omer Pasha's
landing and from movements observed in the Russian
camp, that Mouravieff was about to raise the siege.
General Kmety, however, a distinguished Hungarian
officer of Williams' staff, whose name Sandwith always
mentions with honour, held firmly to the opinion that
there would be an attack ; and he was right.
Already, at the very beginning of the siege, on June
16th, Mouravieff had made a vigorous attempt to take
the city by a coup-de-main, but he had found the
fortifications too strong for him, and the resistance too
spirited. But by the end of September he saw that the
time had come to make an attack in force, and on the
29th it was duly delivered. At four in the morning ¦&
sentry on Tahmasp Station, two miles to the north-west
of the city, heard suspicious sounds, which Kmety
soon recognised as the tramp of infantry and the
rumble of artillery- waggons. At five began the attack
on the breastworks and batteries, and for seven hours'
the fight raged, column after column of Russians fiing-
ing themselves with extraordinary devotion against the
very mouths of the guns. The redoubts on the north
were taken, held for a considerable time, and re-taken,

KARS. 139
while a large force of Russian cavalry and artiUery
menaced the fort on the plain, to the south of the city.
The heavy gun on the Karadagh, to the east, protected
the "Enghsh tabias," while wherever the attack was
hottest there were to be found "white-turbaned citizens,
armed with their scimitars, plunging into the fight, or
athletic and savage Lazistan mountaineers, fighting with
the clubbed rifle.'' All the -witnesses speak to the great
exceUence of Colonel Lake's batteries, which com
manded all possible points of attack, and which covered
each other so completely that the capture of one was the
signal for a plunging fire from others, which soon
rendered it untenable. At mid-day the hopeless
struggle ended, and the Russian army, which had out
numbered the Turks by more than two to one, was
in full retreat. Had Williams possessed but two
regiments of cavah-y, Moura-vieff's force would have
been destroyed, and Kars saved ; but famine had
already been at work, and the remnant of the cavalry
had cut its way out some weeks before.
This was one of the bloodiest battles of the whole
war, the Turks burying no less than 6,800 Russians,
not to speak of their own considerable but much
inferior losses. As at Plevna twenty-two years later,
they had shown themselves most formidable in the
defence of fortifications — had shown, in fact, that strong
earthworks, manned by themselves, were impregnable.
It was now universally thought that Mouravieff must
raise the siege, for he had convinced himself that
nothing was to be gained by assaulting the city, and his

140 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
force was in imminent danger of being attacked by Omer
Pasha. That General's advance, however, was never
made. His expedition was a wretched fiasco, and
Mouravieff remained undisturbed, with time to re-form
his shattered forces and to renew the blockade. Mean
time, within the city, the havoc wrought by the battle
only increased the difficulty of Williams' position. He
had, indeed, fewer mouths to feed, but the hospitals
were full, and the cholera, which had for some weeks
been doing its fatal work in the city, now found a stiU
more favourable field for its ravages among the multi
tude of wounded men. On the 6th October the deaths
from this disease amounted to forty in twelve hours.
The supply of animal food was totally exhausted, and
the troops from this time had to content themselves -with
11 ounces of bread and a soup containing If ounces of
meal, as each person's daily aUowance. On October
17th, Sand-with writes : — " The cholera, after having cut
off" about a thousand of our troops, is now, thank God,
disappearing. The townspeople have suffered more
than the soldiers. But now a worse enemy menaces us.
Our troops suffer fearfuUy from their diet of bread and
water ; they are no longer the stout and hearty men
who fought for seven hours against overwhelming odds,
and drove back a magnificent Russian army. A visible
emaciation is observed throughout the ranks, and the
newly-opened hospitals are filling daily with men, whose
only disease is exhaustion from want of nutriment.
The high price of bread, too, in the town induces many
poor fellows to sell half their rations, and those who

KARS. 141
yield to this temptation inevitably sink at their posts
and die."
All this time Sandwith's work in the hospitals was
incessant and most severe. His supplies of medicines,
as we have said, were totally inadequate, but his own
energy, and the help which he received both from
General Williams and from what he calls " the noble
little band of ill-paid and Ul-treated Turkish surgeons,"
enabled him to make head against the tremendous 'odds
by which he was attacked. The Turkish surgeons
were ready to adopt his improved modes of treatment,
and it is to their willingness to acquiesce in their mea
sures that he attributes the escape of the city from any
visitation of hospital gangrene or epidemic of typhus.
His diary during these weeks is full of such entries as
these : —
" October 2bth. — Many admissions into the hospital
of men nearly dead from cold, operating on a feeble and
emaciated body. All the diseases have what is called a
low type, requiring a stimulus. Unfortunately we have
scarce any medicines available,"
"November 4ith.- — An unusual number of soldiers
enter the hospital, dying of starvation. The emaciation
is wonderful, yet in most no diarrhoea or other symptom
of disease is observable. Their voices are excessively
feeble. A clammy cold pervades the surface of the body,
and they die -without a struggle. Several of these men
are recovered by the administration of horse broth, with
the application of warmth to the extremities. Surgeons
are posted in every part of the camp with broth of horse-

142 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
flesh in the form and under the name of medicine. A
search is made for surviving horses, and these are secured
to make soup for the hospital."
The reason why the city and the troops were put to
this extremity of suffering was that during the whole of
November WiUiams was expecting the advance of Selim
Pasha, who, ha-ving landed at Trebizond with 20,000
men, had arrived at Erzeroum towards the end of
October, and was thought to be rapidly advancing upon
the Russians. False messages came in day after day ;
Omer, having found the march across the Armenian
mountains impracticable, had marched upon Tiflis, and
had already taken one or two Russian fortresses ; Selim
was mo-ving rapidly forward, he himself announcing, on
the 12th November, that his advanced guard had de
feated a Russian corps d'armee, and that in three days
he would be with them. Buoyed up by these false and
cruel announcements, the heroic garrison stiU held out,
though they and the inhabitants were in the last stages
of starvation, and though mothers, as Sandwith writes,
kept bringing their chUdren to the military councU,
and throwing them at the feet of the officers, exclaiming,
" Take and keep these children, for we have no bread
to give them." At last, early on the morning of the
22nd, a messenger arrived with a despatch from Selim
Pasha to the Mushir or Governor of the city. He was
to have left Erzeroum for Kars on the 16th, and would
hasten on. Besides this veracious Turkish document
there is a little note in cipher from Consul Brant. It
is as follows: — "Selim Pasha won't advance, although

KARS. 143
Major Stuart is doing his utmost to make him. Omer
Pasha has not advanced far from Soukhum Kale. I
fear you have no hope but in yourselves. You can
depend on no help in this quarter."
This note decided the fate of Kars. Williams had
not troops enough for a sortie, and, besides, his men
could scarcely stand through weakness. To resist any
longer would be sheer cruelty, and -with a heavy heart
he resolved upon capitulation. The story of his
interview with Mouravieff may best be described in
Sandwith's words.
"November 25th. — General Williams and his aide-
de-camp Teesdale rode over under a flag of truce to the
Russian camp. They are well received by Mouravieff.
The General tells his chivalrous enemy that he has no
wish to rob him of his laurels ; the fortress contains a
large train of artiUery, -with numerous standards and a
variety of arms, but the army has not yet surrendered,
nor will it without certain articles of capitiUation. ' If
you grant not these,' exclaimed the General, ' every gun
shall be burst, every standard burnt, every trophy
destroyed, and you may then work your will on a
famished crowd. ' ' I have no wish, ' answered Mouravieff,
' to wreak an unworthy vengeance on a gaUant and
long-suffering army which has covered itself with glory,
and only yields to famine. Look here 1 ' he exclaimed,
pointing to a lump of bread and a handful of roots,
' what splendid troops must these be who can stand
to their arms in such a severe climate on food such as
this ! General Wilhams, you have made yourself a

144 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
name in history, and posterity -will stand amazed at
the endurance, the courage, and the disciphne which
this siege has called forth in the remains of an army.
Let us arrange a capitulation that will satisfy the
demands of war without outraging humanity.' " The
terms of the capitulation were, briefly, that the officers
and soldiers were to pile arms and march out with
music and colours and surrender themselves prisoners
of war ; the officers to be allowed to retain their swords,
as a special mark of honour and respect. Private
property and public buUdings were to be respected,
the inhabitants protected, the Bashi-Bazouks to be sent
home, the medical corps and a certain number of
foreign officers to be released.
" And now," says Sandwith, " after holding this
fine army in check for seven hours, we deliver ourselves
up to the vanquished. We lay down our arms to our
conquered enemy, starved by the dishonest jobbery of
rascally pashas, and the wicked apathji- and unworthy
intrigues of modern Byzantine officials !''
In the town, when on the morning of the 28th the
Turkish soldiers were told of the capitulation, a strange
and moving scene took place. " The poor staggering
soldiers obey their orders mechanicaUy, but some there
are who dash their muskets to pieces against the rocks,
exclaiming, ' Thus perish our pashas, and the curse of
God be with them 1 ' Some of the officers break their
swords, and, caring not who hears them, heap curses on
the Sultan and the whole government of the empire —
awful words, which I had never heard even whispered

KARS. 145
before. The citizens gather together in groups, ex
claiming, 'God is great! ' and, ' Has it come to this?'
' Now is Islam fallen ! ' . . . In the midst of these
lamentations General Williams rode through the camp.
At once the citizens crowded round him, kissing his
stirrup and praying for blessings on his head. ' Where
are you going. Pasha ? ' they asked. ' I am a prisoner,'
he answered. ' Let us go with you ; we will follow
you,' was the universal cry."
Two days after the capitulation General Mouravieff
gave Sandwith his unconditional liberty, in special
recognition of the services which he had rendered to
the Russian wounded who had fallen into Turkish
hands after the battle of September 29th. It remained
then for him to make his way to Constantinople, no
easy task at any time, and least of all in the depth of
winter, when the only horse he could procure was a
living skeleton, and when the country for miles around
had been cleared of everything that might serve for food
by the forces of the invader. The difficulties of his
journey were almost incredible, and more than once
he well-nigh perished in the snow. On one occasion
the whole of the baggage was actually lost, and
it was by sheer good fortune that the servants
whom he sent back next day to recover it succeeded
in finding the most precious part of all, his MS.
journal of the siege. At last, after adventures which
need not now detain us, he reached Artvin, and thence,
on December llth, entered Batoum, to proceed with
out impediment to Constantinople.

146
CHAPTER X.
.LONDON SOCIETY.
Tt was with good reason that Sandwith called the accident
which sent him to Kars the " corner-stone of his
fortunes." Till then he had been one among the crowd ;
with many gifts, indeed — that of a hopeful and generally
happy temperament being not the least of them — but
with few opportunities, and with hardly enough success
even ^o encourage him in his outlook towards the future.
AU of a sudden he found himself raised to an extraor
dinary position. At the end of 1855 the English public
had been long weary of the war. Blunders, mismanage
ment, the sufferings of the troops in the Crimea, and
the losses in men and money which had been experi
enced, had sufficed to change the ardent feelings with
which the country had entered upon the campaign into
feelings of doubt, despondency, and disgust. The army
no doubt had fuUy sustained its old reputation for
courage and for sheer fighting power. It had won two
pitched battles, and separate corps and separate indi
viduals had performed exploits of great heroism. At
last, too, the great siege was over, and Sebastopol was in
the hands of the allies. But this was not enough to re
kindle the flames of enthusiasm, or to prevent the English
people seeing that the general loss and destruction caused
by the war had been far beyond their calculations, and
probably far outweighed the benefits which had been
gained. In an interesting book which has been lately

LONDON SOCIETY. 147
published,* Mr. J. H. Skene, whose name has more than
once occurred in these pages, has recorded some impres
sions which the actual experience of the Crimean War
left upon the mind of the man who was, next to the
Emperors of France and Russia, more responsible for it
than any other individual. After Sebastopol had fallen.
Lord Stratford visited the to-wn, and Mr. Skene accom
panied him. "Leaving the quarantine," he says, in his
description of this visit, " we came to the cemetery,
which had been occupied by the light troops with
dreadful slaughter. . . . Monuments and grave
stones had been sadly knocked about by the fire of
artillery. Cypresses and weeping willows lay on the
ground, uprooted by exploding shells. Cannon balls
and splintered shells were scattered over graves and
flower-beds. We climbed a breach which had given
passage to a storming party, and found ourselves in
broad streets, now lined with ruins, but still shovdng
what the town had once been. It was a scene of com
plete devastation — walls tottering, doors driven in,
windows smashed, and roofs gaping with the enormous
clefts opened by the bombardment. ' John Bright
is fully borne out by all this,' said Lord Stratford,
holding up his hands in amazement. ' If this is a
sample of the effects of war, who would not be
willing to join his peace party? It is more like the
crater of a volcano than a ruined city.' . . . Riding
through some deserted streets we left the houses, and
proceeded to the monastery of St. George, which had
* " With Lord Stratford in the Crimean War," London, 1883.

148 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
acquired an especial interest for Lord Stratford by its
being made use of as a hospital and sanatorium. He
said that of all the results of the war wounds and
diseases were the least questionable, and therefore the
most to be taken into account by those who may ever
have it in their power to exercise an influence on the
making of war or peace. Turning sharply round he
caught my eye. ' You understand me ? ' he added, with
a note of inexpressible sadness. What I understood,
whether accurately or not, was that having taking a
conspicuous part in bringing about the Crimean War, he
had fallen into a morbid habit of comparing the reality
of its political issues, for which he had so earnestly
laboured, with that of the amount of suffering produced
by it." Whether Lord Stratford's habit was morbid or
not is a question on which a great deal might be said,
but there can at least be no doubt that it was a habit
into which very large numbers of the English people
had by this time fallen with him. But the episode of
the defence of Kars was of a nature to appeal to other
emotions, and to bring before the popular mind another
aspect of war from that to which a long campaign had
by this time accustomed it. The spectacle of heroic
endurance was such as to touch the hearts of aU English
men, while its military result — that of stopping the
advance of the Russian army until the conquest of
Armenia became impossible — might be looked upon as
in itself a great success.
When Sandwith arrived in London, he found that
the interest felt in the defence of Kars was concentrated

LONDON SOCIETY. 149
upon his own person. He was the only man who had
escaped to tell the tale, for his companions were prisoners
of war. The circumstances of his own release were in
themselves romantic, and he had to face the ordeal of a
double celebrity — that of being the representative of a
heroic band, and that of being himself the man whom
the victorious enemy had singled out as having earned
his release by his services to the cause of humanity.
Accordingly, the story of his first six months in England
is a record of a quite exceptional social triumph.
Society, in the limited sense of the word, was at his
feet ; while his appearance in the lecture room, or in the
towns where he had spent his youth, was the signal for
popular welcome of the most enthusiastic kind.
" I started from Constantinople," he writes, " on
January 1st, 1856, on board the Euplirate, a French
steamer bound for Marseilles. My companion was
Colonel Townley, a Government messenger, a bearer of
despatches ; a fact which was very useful to me, for he
took a special train from Lyons, which saved us a day
of our journey. With us was General Espinasse, the
unlucky hero of the Dobrudscha adventure, who was
returning home on sick leave, and who was invited by
To-wnley to accompany him. We arrived in Paris on
the morning of January 8th. I saw General Espinasse
throw himself into the arms of his wife, who was waiting
for him on the platform, and that was the last I saw of
him. His head was knocked off by a cannon ball during
the Italian war. Next day — a gloomy, dark, drizzly
morning — we arrived in London. I confess that I was

150 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
giddy with joy as I jumped into a cab with Townley,
returning to England as I did under such different
auspices from those with which I had left. My first
duty was to buy some decent clothes, and then I called
on Layard, who was living in Ryder Street. He was
glad to see me, but when I told him that I had the best
part of a book in MS., he became quite excited, jumped
up, and said, ' Come along to Murray, he lives close by.'
Accordingly we went over together to Albemarle Street,
and as we entered Mr. Murray's sanctum, Layard
exclaimed, ' Murray, I have brought you a man who has
been feeding on horse-flesh ! ' He then introduced me,
and Mr. Murray requested me to send over my MS. for
perusal, also asking me to dine with him that evening."
That day was spent in various offlcial and other
visits. On the next he returned early to the hotel,
and walked into the coffee-room. , " A little old man,
whom I scarcely recognised, peers into my face ; it is
my father, to my eyes, wonderfully aged. He says,
' How do you do ? ' holding out his hand. A great
lump rises in my throat as I answer, ' Oh, how do you
do ? Come into my room.' I take him upstairs into
my room, close the door, and then throw myself sobbing
into his arms. . . . Six years before I had parted
from him, poor, but full of enthusiasm, and amid the
dire misgivings of all around me. Now I had returned
full of honour, having gained a position far beyond my
most sanguine anticipations. On the receipt of my
telegram my father had hastily thrown a few things
into his portmanteau, and hurried up to London to meet

• LONDON SOCIETY. 151
his beloved and long-lost son ; and no wonder, for it
was not so long before that prayers for my safety were
being offered up by the congregation of the parish
church. News had come of the state of famine in the
beleaguered city ; then of the capitulation ; then a long
pause ; then that I had not gone into Russia, but that
I was missing ; then that I had turned up at Con
stantinople ; afterwards a pause of ten or twelve days ;
and lastly, the exciting telegram from London — ' I have
arrived, but am detained here on urgent affairs.'
" We descend into the street, and take a walk
together ; we feel as if we could never talk enough
about the past and the present. After this walk I call
on Lord Panmure, the Secretary of War, with whom I
have an interesting conversation, and on Delane, the
editor of the Times, who receives me quite warmly.
"¦January 14M. — Very busy writing at the book.
General Beatson calls, and other officers. Sir Roderick
Murchison calls, and invites me to dinner. This gentle
man, who was very wealthy, and lived in Belgrave
Square, was the most eager lion-hunter in London ; his
calling on me proved at once that I was entering the
season as an approved lion. He was a most urbane and
distinguished old gentleman, and a very accomplished
geologist. His failing Avas a passionate love of
worshipping great people. His great god was the
Emperor of Russia, and it vexed his soul to be at war
-with that potentate ; his lesser deities were composed of
British dukes aud marquises. As I had spoken so
highly of Mouravieff, he at once took me into favour.

152 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
That night, at the Geographical Society, a gentleman
spoke very earnestly. I fancied that I remembered his
face, and so asked him if his name was Washington.
He was Captain Washington, the Hydrographer of the
Navy, whom I had consulted some years before about
myself. He had recommended me for the surgeoncy of
an emigrant vessel. He gives me the warmest wel
come. "January 16th. — I was writing this morning at my
book, in my new lodging, when my landlady ushered in
a quiet-looking man of about forty-flve. Here again, I
said to myself, is one of my old fellow-students — for
several had called upon me and I had not remembered
their faces. This time I was determined not to forget,
so I exclaimed, ' Oh, how do you do ? ' I am so glad
to see you again.' ' I think you mistake,' answered my
visitor, ' I am Lord GranviUe.' We had a good deal of
conversation about Lord Stratford. That day a very
strong article appeared in the limes concerning Lord
Stratford's behaviour to General Williams. The writer
evidently had got behind the scenes, and knew exactly
how many despatches General Williams had written to
the Ambassador without even getting an answer. It
struck me at once that I should be suspected of com
municating this information to the Times, a most un
pardonable offence with offlcial people. So I wrote off"
at once to Lord Clarendon and Lord Stratford de Red
cliffe disclaiming any such action. Some time after
wards I talked the matter over with a friend, when he
laughingly reminded me that in a conversation with C,

LONDON SOCIETY. 153
a writer in the Times, I had let out all that was written
— that, in fact, he had wormed the whole matter out of
me, as well became a journalist. I had long ago
despatched the letters, so I allowed the matter to
drop. "January \%t]i. — I am invited to become an honorary
member of the Reform Club for three months. A very
useful compliment, for, in future, I always breakfast at
the Club. I have no need to use it for dining, as I am
overwhelmed with dinner invitations. About this time
I have an interview with Lord Palmerston. He
questions me a little about Turkey ; I am not very
much impressed by this interview. It was different in
the case of Lord Clarendon (then Minister of Foreign
Affairs), on whom I shortly called by appointment.
Nothing could exceed his kindness and courtesy. Our
conversation only turned upon the Kars episode of the
war. He said that he quite agreed with me as to the
fatal mistake made by Omer Pasha in landing the
relieving army at Soukhum Kale instead of at Trebi
zond, but the former plan was urged upon the Govern
ment by Lord Stratford, Colonel Simmons,* and Omer
Pasha. I understood that Colonel Simmons was the
leading spirit, and had planned this campaign.
" Before I took leave of the Minister he said, ' WeU,
Dr. Sandwith, and what are your own views as to
future employment ? What can I do to assist you ? '
I replied, ' I have not fully thought that matter out,
I only want a holiday, after which, if you wiU permit
* Now General Sir Lintom Simmons.

154 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
me, I wiU again call on your lordship ; ' to which he
answered, ' Well, Dr. Sandwith, in the first place I shall
be most anxious to oblige my dear old friend Lord
Carlisle, who has an extraordinary affection for you; and
in the second place, for what I must term your very
eminent services I should be most happy to do my
best for you.' I bowed gratefully, feeling at the same
time not a little amused that Lord Clarendon should
have so exactly followed the traditions of British aristo
cratic government in thinking first of obliging his
noble friend Lord Carlisle, and afterwards of what he
pleased to call my services."
This matter of his future employment was, of course,.
much on Sandwith's mind at this time. He was
anxious to leave his own profession, for which he
really had no taste, and to obtain some kind of ap
pointment. There was at first some talk of his finding
work in Ireland, but Lord Carlisle discouraged this,
faithful to the maxim of " Ireland for the Irish."
Then Sand-with naturally turned his face to the East,
which he had learned to know and to love with an
exclusive affection, the special object of his desire
being a good consulship, or even a consul-generalship.
It will be seen from what follows that this desire was
never gratified, and that when an appointment offered
it was to a far other corner of the globe that he was.
called upon to go.
" January 2%th. — This day I finished the MS. of my
book, and in the evening I dined with the Royal
Geographical Society. Sir Roderick Murchison, the

LONDON SOCIETY. 155
President, proposed my health in a very flattering
speech. Two days later I went to Lady Granville's
soiree, where I was introduced to Mr. Gladstone.
Lady Gran-ville asked me to dine on the following day,
and I now began to reaUse the fact that I was a ' lion.'
It was very nice. I was young, healthy, and
susceptible to flattery ; and so I thoroughly enjoyed
existence under the circumstances. I used to see people
nudging each other slyly, and pointing me out to be
gazed at. With all my inexperience, however, I was
yet thoroughly aware that this could not last, so that
while receiving an abundance of intoxicating flattery I
took care to keep a cool head, and to be very modest and
cautious. " On the last day of January I was breakfasting in
the Reform Club when, as I took up the Times, my eye
caught the words, ' The Siege of Kars,' and I began to
read. It was difficult to keep cool under this my first
experience of a re-view, for the writer spoke of my
book with enthusiasm. ' Dr. Sandwith,' it began, ' has
come like the messenger of the Greek drama to recount ,
his tale of subversive destiny with the accurate fidelity of
an eye-witness and a sufferer. He is the sole visible
relic of a painful catastrophe, and we catch eagerly at
the tidings he brings us. He was one of the defenders
of the beleaguered fortress — its defender possibly in more
senses than one ; but in respect of want, exhaustion, and
disease he was its chief citadel and its very last bulwark.
In the blockaded city endurance mans the breach while
famine and despair press up the glacis. The battle

156 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
is fought with a drooping pulse, and the contest is
determined by a silent agony. In this extremity Dr.
Sandwith strove under his miUtary chieftain to the last,
and he is now here to tell us how they braved the
chilling onset, and how sorely the invisible battle went
against them.' Then after two columns of analysis of
the book the reviewer ended, ' In the meantime there is
no doubt upon one or two points. Veeliams Pasha chock
adam dur. (Williams Pasha is no end of a man.) So
say the Karsli, who would have followed him to the
death; and as for the writer we maintain that Dr.
Sandwith is a noble soldier, and that he deserves weU
of his country. He has borne a memorable part in a
memorable siege, and he has told a soldier's story with
a soldier's frankness.' This review, I afterwards
ascertained, was written by Delane himself. It showed
some generosity on his part, for, as my readers may
recollect, he had written severely to me at Constan
tinople, and had dismissed me from my post of
correspondent of the Times. He now seemed to wish to
make up for it as well as he could."
It was clear from the beginning that Sandwith's
book was to have a great success. The reviews,
almost without exception, followed the lead of the
Times, and agreed in bearing witness not only to the
interest of the story, but to the clear and straight
forward manner in which it had been told. In a very
few weeks Mr. Murray was able to advertise the fifth
thousand, and as Sandwith in the course of the spring
went about England delivering his lecture, he commonly

LONDON SOCIETY. 157
saw placards in the booksellers' windows, " Dr. Sand
with's ' Siege of Kars ' sold here." Jhe success was
not only gratifying but important, for the profits of the
book enabled him with a clear conscience to rest awhile
on his oars, and to enjoy to the full, at least for a few
months, the new atmosphere in which he found himself.
It should be mentioned that offlcial as well as social
recognition was quickly forthcoming, and the Gazette
soon announced the appointment of Sandwith and of
his Kars comrades to the Companionship of the Bath.
" On Sunday night, February 3rd, I put myself
into the train for Hull, and in the early morning I
arrived at my dear old home. No. 1, Albion Street.
What feelings were mine on this my return after seven
years of wanderings and experiences ! The last time I
had stood on those steps my heart was full to bursting ;
I was leaving all I held dear for an adventure full of
peril and perplexity ; again and again had I been
tempted to return and forswear all my desires for
foreign adventure, and when crawling like a wounded
serpent over the cold mountains of Kurdistan, sick
almost to death, clothed in rags, covered with vermin,
how had I been tempted to return to England and
confess that I had faUed ! How, again, had I been
tempted when struggling for a bare livelihood at Con
stantinople with shattered health ! But I had held on
like grim death, and now I was reaping my reward.
I remembered the significant words I had written in
my diary on my departure : 'He that now goeth on his
way weeping, and beareth forth good seed, shall doubt-

158 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
less come again -with joy, and bring his sheaves -with
him.' I had entered that passage in my diary on the
23rd Februar}'-, 1849, after a heart-rending leave-taking
from my father. I now stood at the same door, -with
my golden sheaves in my arm. I rushed in, and was
soon in the fervid embraces of my loving mother and
sisters." Then followed a -visit to Beverley, where the
five dismal years of his medical apprenticeship were
speedily forgotten in the cordial and affectionate greeting
which he received from his uncle and his uncle's family.
Afterwards came the Corporation banquet in his honour
in the Railway Hotel at Hull ; and there, " in the
presence of two hundred people," says Sandwith, " I,
for the first time in my life, rose and made a speech
of about three-quarters of an hour long. I had made
no preparation beyond an exordium, trusting to my
being full of my subject. I did pretty well, and was
much complimented, but I have often thought since
that I might have done infinitely better had I taken
pains to compose and commit to memory a speech
worthy of the occasion. But my faculties were so
scattered by constant visiting that I was unequal to
any such effort.
"Next day I accompanied my father to a dinner
given in my honour by the medical men of the town
and neighbourhood. Their welcome of me was remark
ably warm and hearty."
Returning to town, he found no diminution in the
cordiality with which he was received. As usual,
people whose geography was vague credited him with

LONDON SOCIETY. 159
most comprehensive knowledge of all the strange places
of the earth ; and at one dinner party, a controversy
arising as to the pronunciation of Lake Ngami, a lady
exclaimed, " Oh, ask Dr. Sandwith, he has been so much
in the East that he is sure to know ! " — Kars, as
everybody is aware, being close to Central Africa.
One tribute is worthy of special quotation, on account
of the source from which it came. At a party at the
Belgian Minister's Sandwith was introduced to a cele
brated lady, the Hon. Mrs. Norton. " She looked at
me with an expression of mingled pity and admiration,
and said, ' Some one pointed jom out to me, and I said.
That must be Dr. Sandwith; he looks like one who
has gone through so much, and written such a book.'
I used to go to Lavender Hill, and recount all this
gossip to my dear sister and my niece, and many a
hearty laugh we had over it."
"On February 13th I received a letter from Lord
Stratford as follows : — ' Constantinople, January 30th, 1856.
' Dear Sir,
' I have received your disclaimer, and I have also seen, though
imperfectly, the article of the Times to which it relates. I accept
your assurance with the more satisfaction, as I had been told that you
went to England with intentions hostile to me. I was slow to believe
the imjoutation, because, whatever opinions you entertain, I reckon
upon your honourable feeling, and cannot forget that on more than
one occasion I have endeavoured to serve you, and by your means
have served the cause of humanity. You speak of my unfortunate
differences with General YVilliams. I had no differences whatever
with him until he thought proper, under mistaken impressions or
injudicious advice, to cancel my claims on his gratitude, and even then
I ceased not to afford him whatever assistance I could extort from the

160 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
defective means and characteristic vices of the Porte. I know that
intrigues have been long on foot to do me all possible mischief. I
have met the earliest manifestation of them by requesting that the
whole of the correspondence may be laid before Parliament.
' Yours sincerely,
'Stratford de Redcliffe.'
A very characteristic letter from a thoroughly ego
tistical man."
The Saturday after this Sandwith called " by com
mand " at Buckingham Palace and had an interview
-with Prince Albert. " The Prince stood and asked me
numerous questions, and from time to time leaned or
half seated himself upon a table. He was very minute
in his inquiry abqut the roads and other military details
concerning Armenia. I describe all I can, and especially
do I give him an account of the reign of terror in Kars,
when spies were sent into the cafes and when on hearing
any one propose to give up the city they denounced the
culprit, who was forthwith flogged. On hearing this
the Prince said, ' Ah, I wish we could have that done in
the London clubs ! ' At that time the Prince was very
unpopular, and I was astonished at his imprudence in
making this very un-English remark. I took care not
to repeat it. Had I done so there would have been a
great row.
" While I was thus engaged in conversation with
the Prince, a pair of folding-doors are thrown open, and
a lacquey cries, ' The Queen 1 ' The Prince, who was
half sitting on a table, sprang up and stood at attention.
Her Majesty, whom I had seen as a pretty young girl
going to be crowned, came forward and bowed three

LONDON SOCIETY. 161
times to my three bows. She began to question me
about Kars, and I ansAvered freely and readily. Her
voice was pleasant, her manners agreeable, and for about
three-quarters of an hour we thus conversed."
Then followed a short and very pleasant visit to
Lord Carlisle at the Vice-Regal Lodge, where, after
many and varied entertainments, the Lord-Lieutenant
one day took him quite privately to a prison, where he
examined the schoolmaster as to what was being done
for the instruction of the prisoners, and on coming out
said, ' I was anxious to show you that we do not spend
all our time in flddling and dancing.'
" About the 7th of March the Blue Book on Kars
came out, and made an immense sensation. It was
there shown that Lord Stratford had behaved abominably
to General Williams, refusing to answer an immense
number of despatches. The reason of this behaviour
was, of course, an intense jealousy."*
Early in March Sandwith received a very welcome
letter from his publisher, which contained a cheque for
a hundred guineas on account, and ended with the
following paragraph, which should be of exceptional
interest to authors : — " Owing to the success and rapid
sale of your work, it gives me pleasure to state to you
that after the present edition is exhausted (and it goes
* Mr. Skene, in his recent book, in which lie seems to hold a brief for
Lord Stratford, confesses that many of Williams's despatches remained
unanswered, and adds, " He could not expect, however, that every one of his
reports should have an acknowledgment of receipt, and it was surely enough
that the requests contained in them should receive prompt attention.'' But
prompt attention was exactly what they did not receive.

162 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
off rapidly), and in case of all future reprints, I propose
to hand over to you two-thirds of the profits instead of
one half."
From the social records of this London season we
may select a few of the most interesting incidents.
" March 15 th. — A pleasant talk with Sir Heniy
HoUand. He told me that he began life by being
appointed Physician to Queen Caroline, and while
travelling with her he made the acquaintance of great
numbers of the aristocracy, so that on his return to
London he launched forth at once into a lucrative
practice. He never would make more than £5,000 a
year, as that employed his time sufflciently, without
harassing him. Dr. Baillie in one year made £10,000,
which was the most ever earned by a London physician
up to that time ; but he overtaxed his strength and
died soon after. Surgeons make even more, as they
have been known to receive £1,000 for a single
operation. Sir Henry Holland says he is very fond of
his practice, which brings him in contact with all kinds
of people. He takes a two months' holiday every
summer, which does him a world of good.
" March 26th. — Dine and sleep at Pembroke Lodge.
I find Lord John Russell as thoroughly impressed as
any one could be with the worthlessness of the Turkish
Government ; yet a few years afterwards, when Foreign
Minister, he pursued the traditional policy of the
Foreign Offlce in upholding that effete Empire as if he
believed in it. There was at this time a question of
extending the direct authority of Turkey over Wallachia

LONDON SOCIETY. 163
and Moldavia, and I was glad to find that Lord John
disapproved of that measure.
" Jpril 4<th. — I lecture at the United Service Institu
tion, the room being crowded to suffocation. I find
myself absurdly nervous, keeping my eyes fixed upon
the paper, which I fancy I must have hurried through.
I had prepared four men to represent natives, and these,
being dressed in suitable CQstumes, produced a fine
effect. They were guardsmen, and they held themselves
too straight and stiff to be natural, but the audience
was enthusiastic, and not critical.
" April 16th. — A letter from Sir Roderick Murchison,
announcing that I had been elected on the Special
Committee List of the Athenseum. A few days after
wards I gave my lecture at the Royal Institution, Albe
marle Street, to an audience of the most distinguished
people in London. I had re- written and improved it,
and I delivered it with courage and freedom. When I
came to the most harrowing part, the Duchess of
Northumberland went off in a faint.
" Jpril 24:th. — Breakfasted with Bishop Wilberforce,
meeting Mr. Gladstone, Macaulay, and others. Macaulay
talked, or rather harangued, like one of his own
delightful essays.
"April 28th. — The long debate on Kars began, and
I attended it. Whiteside, an Irish politician of the
hottest kind, led the attack on the Ministry, and made
a long and able speech. The debate was interesting,
but in my opinion showed the weakness of government
by party. The real culprit was Lord Stratford, who

164 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
ought to have been impeached. He deliberately
endangered Kars from the most petty jealousy of
Williams, who had been appointed without his con
currence. The Opposition failed to defeat the Ministry
of Palmerston." On the 8th May there was a ball at Buckingham
Palace, and we may venture to quote an amusing
passage from the letter in which Sandwith described
this brilliant affair for the benefit of his nieces and
nephews. He had been very much embarrassed by the
kind action of the Duke of Cambridge, who, as the
crowd filed past the Royal dai's, stepped down and
heartily shook hands -with him. " Now, was not this,"
he says, " too much ? I was quite upset, so I left the
ball-room at once, and sought retirement. I wandered
through those magnificent rooms, pondering on the
mutations of human affairs, and soon I found a quiet
room where I was aU but alone. I had unwittingly got
into a sort of Royal sanctum sanctorum. I was
awakened from my reverie by the rustle of silks and the
soft tread of feet. I turned round and saw some gold-
covered chamberlains, -with white wands in their hands,
coming through the doors, and I caught a glimpse of
Prince Albert leading a lady, and preceded by these
Royal messengers. I turned to run, to hide myself
behind the curtains, to jump out of windows. It was
of no avail. I dared not turn my back, so I walked
rapidly backwards, hoping to escape. But Albert's eye
had caught sight of me, and I at once received a
summons. I advanced. The whole party stopped.

LONDON SOCIETY. 165
The Prince said, ' Dr. Sandwith, I am very glad to
have found you. I wish to present you to H.R.H. the
Duchess of Cambridge, who desires to make your ac
quaintance.' I bowed profoundly, muttering ' flattered,'
' Royal Highness,' etc., and the Duchess said a number
of pretty things.
"May 12th. — About this time, when coming home
one afternoon, I found on my table a parcel from the
Foreign Offlce, which I opened, and found therein a
magnificent snuff-box, the lid encrusted with diamonds
of considerable value. This exquisite piece of art is
from the Sultan. The world is immensely interested
about this time by the trial of Palmer the surgeon, of
Rugeley, for the murder of his sporting friend by
poison. My uncle at Beverley remarked, ' My nephew
Humphry and Palmer divide the world between them.'
Palmer was eventually hanged, and I was transported
—to the Mauritius ! "
At the end of May Sandwith received a letter from
Dr. Thomson, Provost of Queen's (now Archbishop of
York), saying that he was authorised to offer him the
honorary degree of D.C.L. from the University of
Oxford, to be conferred at the Commemoration shortly
to be held.
It need hardly be said that he appreciated this
honour very highly. It was an exceptionally brilliant
Commemoration. A large number of degrees were
conferred, the principal recipients being the Crown
Prince of Prussia, Admirals Lyons and Dundas, some of
the Crimean Generals, and the Turkish Ambassador

166 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
Musurus Bey. It is said by those who were present
that Sandwith's reception by the undergraduates, who
thronged the gallery, was the most clamorously cordial
of all. It is a strange instance of the irony of fortune
to note that at the moment when he was going through
this briUiant ceremony, his favourite niece, a young girl
of seventeen, who during the few months of his stay in
England had succeeded in winding herself round his
heart, was lying dead of fever at her home on Lavender
HiU.

CHAPTER XI.
the embassy to MOSCOW.
During the month of June, a few weeks after the
signature of Peace, Sandwith was told by Delane, whom
he met in the street, that he had something important
to communicate. The news was that Lord Granville
had been appointed Ambassador Extraordinary for the
purpose of attending the coronation of the Emperor
Alexander II. , and that he wished Delane to inquire
whether Sandwith would be willing to join this Embassy
as physician. It was a very flattering offer, and one
which Sandwith, though he had particular reasons for
wishing to stay in London, was easily persuaded to
accept. The Embassy was to start in about six weeks,
and during the interval Sandwith accompanied Lord
GranviUe, whose health was not good, to Carlsbad,

THE EMBASSY TO MOSCOW. 167
passing through Paris, and there seeing a good deal of
high Imperialist and Legitimist society, and spending a
part of every evening at the theatre.
It was on July 28th that the members of the
Special Embassy, including Lord Dalkeith, Mr. G. Leve
son Gower, Mr. Villiers Lister, Sir Robert Peel, and many
others, assembled at the Lord Warden Hotel at Dover,
the Ambassador himself and Lady Granville intending
to join them at Hamburg. The voyage was unevent
ful, and on most evenings the sea was calm enough to
allow of a good deal of festivity. Sandwith records a
conversation which he had with Sir Robert Peel, to
the effect " that the Russians were bitterly averse
to giving up the Isle of Serpents at the mouth of
the Danube, and consequently Lord Clarendon had
been -writing in a very stern manner. Lord Granville,
it seems, anticipates some difficulties in his mission,
and teUs us it is incumbent on all the members
of his suite to be careful in their conversation,
and not to show any want of cordiality tow^ards the
French, "Friday, August 8th, 10 a.m. — We anchor off Cron
stadt, and, hoisting the Russian flag at the fore, we
Are a salute of twenty-one guns. The party then
embarks on a small steamer, and, threading the
maze of formidable batteries, in due time reaches
the Neva and enters St. Petersburg.
" On Sunday I accompanied Sir Robert Peel to
the Winter Palace. I was chiefly charmed by the
pictures and the Crown Jewels ; but Lord Ward, who is

168 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
quite a connoisseur, tells me that the French Crown
Jewels beat them.
" On Monday Sir Robert Peel goes over the Hermit
age, where a Russian tells him that the flne Greek
antiquities were removed thence as early. as 1851 in
anticipation of war."
The party spent some time in St Petersburg,
seeing the sights, and being introduced to the Emperor
and various Imperial Highnesses ; and on the 18th
August they started for Moscow, tBavelling in great
state, and being received at the railway station by a
string of magniflcent carriages. It need not be said
that Sandwith's Oriental fancy was captivated by the
Kremlin, and by the various Circassian, Mingrelian, and
Tartar soldiers who at that moment were scattered
in numbers about the streets.
" August 26th. — Nine of us go to the Kremlin in
uniform to be presented to the two Grand Dukes, On
arriving at the Palace we were received by a general
officer, and kept waiting some time in an ante-room,
after which the Ambassador is sent for, and presently
he returns with the two Grand Dukes. Constantine
appears to be a very lively, active man, with much less
Imperial dignity about him than the Czar himself.
His brother, too, is lively and agreeable. They both
showed warlike tastes by talking almost exclusively
with those who wore orders, and passing with a bow
those who did not."
It is worth while to extract the whole of Sandwith's
account of the entry of the Emperor into Moscow, which

THE EMBASSY TO MOSCOW. 16 J
may be compared with some of the incidents in the
coronation of the present Emperor, about which so
much was written a year ago.
" August 2Wt. — The day of Alexander's entry into
Moscow. All the Diplomatic corps are invited to the
Princess Kotzebey's house to see the procession. About
one o'clock five of Earl Granville's carriages drive up to
our door, where we are waiting in full diplomatic
uniform. The first carriage is strictly English. It
is drawn by four English bay horses, with silver
harness, with a postboy dressed to perfection, with
black velvet cap, white wig, red embroidered jacket,
buckskin breeches, etc. The coachman, with three-
cornered hat, white wig, and gorgeous livery, recalled
the splendour of another age. Behind were two tall
footmen and a chasseur. The carriage itself was
remarkable for quiet elegance. Lord and Lady
Granville, Sir J. Acton, and F. Leveson-Gower, got into
this. For the rest of the suite were three other
carriages, each with four horses, and each in first-rate
Russian style, which is not as showy as the English, but
very elegant. We drove to the house of Princess
Kotzebey, and when we reached the street through
which the Emperor was to pass we found it lined with
troops and crowded with people.
"Before we alighted we met the carriage of Count
Morny, the French Ambassador. It is preceded by an
outrider, and is drawn by six horses, with postilion and
footman. Two or three other carriages follow, each drawn
by two horses. The military attaches are on horseback.

170 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
and ride at the carriage door. We presently alight at
Mme. Kotzebey's, and are ushered into a suite of rooms
where the representatives of nearly every Power, great
and small, are assembled. Presently we hear the
distant sound of cannon, and then the bells of all the
churches begin to ring. Some horsemen next gallop
down the line, the word of command rings out to
present arms, and then the first of the cortege
appears. The first troops that pass are Asiatics. A
regiment of Circassians, dressed in crimson cloth and
armed in their own peculiar way ; next a troop of
Circassians in full chain armour, with bows and arrows,
as well as swords, daggers, and pistols ; then come some
Mingrelians, with their singular head-dress, viz., a flat
piece of embroidered cloth ; after these a troop of
Armenians, armed, mounted, and dressed after the
fashion of Northern Persia ; then Moslem Karapapaks ;
then a few Kurds, with gaily-embroidered costumes
and monstrous turbans ; then follow the men of
Daghestan, and varieties of Tcherkess, and two or three
Mongolians 'appear to exhaust the specimens of the
Czar's Asiatic subjects. After these came troops of the
Imperial Guard, in shining armour, like our own Life
Guards ; then a succession of gilded carriages, drawn by
eight or six horses, and led by footmen, containing the
officers of the household. The coachmen, the vehicles
themselves, the footmen, outriders and all, seem to have
belonged to the age of Louis XIV., and to have been
resuscitated for the occasion. The procession of gilded
and painted glass coaches seemed interminable, and it

THE EMBASSY TO MOSCOW: 171
was from time to time broken by regiments and
squadrons of infantry and cavalry. When about two-
thirds of the carriages had passed, the Emperor himself
appeared in a military uniform, wearing several military
orders, and riding a beautiful charger, at the head of a
numerous staff of general officers. He was foUowed by
two boys, his sons, apparently about 12 or 13 years old.
When he came opposite to a church he stopped,
uncovered his head and received the blessing of the
priest. There was a good deal of cheering amongst the
people when he appeared, but nothing like the
enthusiastic shouts of the English people. Shortly
after the Emperor had passed, another cortege appeared
of magnificent gilded carriages, in which were the
Empress and her child, the maids of honour, and then
the Empress-mother and her suite.
"The whole procession occupied about an hour in
passing, and was certainly the most gorgeous spectacle
of the kind I had ever seen. The only thing approach
ing to it was the coronation of the Queen of England.
" August 30th.- — Festivities are at their height.
Many of our attaches go to a re-view. I am engaged in
making and returning calls. I call oi^ Mr. W. H.
Russell, the correspondent of the Times, and on Mr.
Murphy, correspondent of the Daily News. The latter
tells me that he has no chance against his rival,
Mr. Russell, as all the Russians believe the latter to be
Lord John Russell.
" September 2nd. — I am presented to the Prince of
Prussia. His manners are charming, as I had decided

172 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
in my own mind before he came up to me, and as soon
as he heard who I was shook me warmly by the hand,
saying that he had been made a doctor at Oxford on the
same day as myself.
" September Mh. — The Austrians hold a levee which
we attend. There is scarcely any one there, and we
learn that the Russians have taken this opportunity for
showing their contempt and dislike of their neighbours.
.The Ambassador, Prince Esterhazy, is a charming old
man, admirably qualified for a conciliatory embassy, but
his temper and dignity must have been sorely tried by
the affronts offered by the Russians. Assuredly, from a
Russian point of view, Austria had behaved with the
blackest ingratitude. In 1848-9 Russia had come to
her aid when she was in the direst straits, when even
Vienna was threatened by insurgent Hungary ; and
Austria had been dragged by Russian aid from the
morass of despair. Then came the great war, and
Austria, instead of aiding Russia, preserved an armed
and semi-hostile neutrality, which kept 100,000 men of
the Russian forces inactive, and, moreover, obliged the
Czar to evacuate Bulgaria and Wallachia. So great was
the exasperation of Russia that the wonder was that
any embassy should be sent from Vienna, or that a
nobleman of high standing could be found to endure
the treatment accorded to him as ambassador."
Sandwith's account of the coronation itself is as
follows : —
" Sunday, September 1th. — A beautiful morning. We
are all up and dressed in full uniform at an early hour.

THE EMBASSY TO MOSCOW. 173
We then proceed in carriages to the French Am
bassador's, where most of the co?ps diplomatique assemble.
We do not alight, but joining the string of carriages
we proceed slowly along through vast crowds to the
Kremlin, where we descend at the gate of the Cathedral
of the Assumption, where a crowd of people, mostly in
uniform, is assembled. Walking through the files of
troops we enter the Cathedral — a small place, covered
from top to bottom with quaint Scriptural paintings and
gUding. I take my place with the rest of the corps
diplomatique, and find myself in an excellent position
to see the whole ceremony. In the centre of the
church between two pillars is a raised dais covered
with cloth, and on this are placed two thrones. On the
right of these, but at about two yards distance, is a
throne for the Empress-mother. This old lady soon
enters and takes her seat; she looks very old and
haggard, and wears a small crown set with brilliants.
Presently several grandees enter bearing cushions of
cloth of gold, on which are placed the Imperial Insignia
— viz., the Standard of the Empire, the Seal of the
Empire, the Sword of State (held by Gortschakoff), the
ermine mantles of the Emperor and Enlpress, the Globe,
the Sceptre, the Crown of the Empress, and the Grand
Imperial Crown.
"At the entrance of the Cathedral about ten or
twelve priests, attired in gorgeous vestments, receive
the Emperor and Empress. The assistants and the
Cavaliers de la Cour carry the train of the Empress.
The Emperor is in a cavalry uniform. When their

174 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
Majesties enter the Church they each bow to the sacred
pictures and kiss them, and perform their little
idolatrous ceremonies.
"The Metropolitan of Moscow holds a sacred book
before the Emperor, who reads with a loud voice the
Profession of the Faith, and then the Empress does the
same, after which the Metropolitan exclaims, ' Gratia
Spiritus Sancti sit semper Tecum,. Amen.' And he
descends from the dais.
" After the reading of a portion of the Holy
Scriptures the Metropolitan mounts the dais again,
when the Emperor takes off from his neck the ordinary
collar of the Order of St. Andrew, and asks for the
collar of diamonds of the same Order and his Imperial
mantle, on which, assisted by the Metropolitans and
other functionaries, he clothes himself in these, the
Metropolitan exclaiming, 'In nomine Patris et FHii et
Spiritus Sancti. Amen.' The Emperor then takes the
crown and places it on his head, also the globe and
sceptre. He then calls the Empress, who kneels before
him, on which he takes off his crown and places it for
a moment on her head, and then replaces it on his own.
The Empress is then crowned with a smaU crown and
clothed with an Imperial mantle, but during some of the
subsequent ceremonies the crown falls from her head.
The superstitious Russians, I fancied, seemed to shudder
at this ominous accident.
" A tremendous peal of bells from all the churches and
loud salutes of artillery proclaim the consummation of the
ceremony, which, however, is followed by a long and very

THE EMBASSY TO MOSCOW. 175
tedious alternation of reading and praying. At a
certain pause in the reading the aged and infirm
Empress-mother totters up to her son, convulsively
throws her arms round his neck, and kisses him with
passionate fervour. A tremor of emotion communi
cates itself to all who see this touch of nature. After
this each member of the Imperial family, including the
nephews and cousins, come forward, and first bowing to
the Emperor kiss him on the breast, he kissing them on
the forehead. After about four hours of these ceremonies
the Imperial cortege departs, and we are relieved from
the constant standing posture which had become
irksome. " On emerging into the outer court of the Kremlin a
most curious scene presented itself in the immense mass
of spectators that filled every available spot of ground.
We presently repaired to a very ancient room of the
Kremlin, where we were regaled with a good luncheon.
This was the ancient dining-room of the Czars, crowded
with the corps diplomatique. After the feast we went
into one of the state rooms, and the Emperor and
Empress dined in public."
Four days afterwards a little incident happened
which is worth relating.
"Sept. llth. — We all go in uniform to congratulate
the Emperor on his birthday. I observed that he was
particularly polite to the French, and spoke a few words
to each member of that Embassy, and to nearly all the
other foreigners except the Turks, whom he seemed to
snub. When Lord Granville came before him the)

176 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
conversed earnestly for some time, the Emperor seeming
to be warm. The Ambassador retired ; we then each
passed before His Majesty and bowed, but he spoke to
none of us. A whisper passed round that something
unpleasant had occurred, and that was all I heard for
some days, when Lord Granville told me that no sooner
did he present himself to the Emperor than the latter
began in a very unpleasant and upbraiding manner to
express his great dissatisfaction at the tone of the
British Government relative to the Isle of Serpents.
Lord Granville, taken by surprise by this unreasonable
rebuke on such an occasion, did little more than bow
and retire, but he went immediately to the Minister
for Foreign Affairs, Orloff, and told him what had
happened, adding that he, the Ambassador, had come
on a congratulatory Embassy, and was quite unprepared
for such a reception, but that he was now thinking of
leaving the country at once, as the Emperor had placed
him in a false position. He added that he awaited
some explanations on the subject. On this being repre
sented to His Majesty, he made the amende in a most
magnanimous way, complimenting Lord Granville, and
afterwards calling personally on Lady Granville, and
with all the Imperial family attending the English ball."
This last-named entertainment followed on the 23rd.,
and was a magnificent affair, a large temporary ball
room having been constructed, and over a thousand
invitations issued.
"Sept. 21th. — Lord Wodehouse is the permanent
English Minister here, and I see a good deal of him.

THE EMBASSY TO MOSCOW. 177
He told me to-day that the English and Russians had
during the war made an agreement not to carry on
hostilities on their American frontier, thereby avoiding
a murderous scalping war between the savage tribes.
" Sept. 28th. — I was called to see Colonel Colt, of
revolver fame, who was suffering from a severe attack
of gout. He told me he was fond of champagne, and
to ensure having it good he always carried a large
quantity about with him wherever he went, which fully
accounted for his gout.
" Sept. 2'dth. — This is the anniversary of our glorious
-victory at Kars, a year ago, and I cannot refrain from
the obvious reflections which the day suggests. How-
different is my own position, some hopes more than
reaUsed, and others disappointed. Strange, too, that
then I should have been one of a starving garrison,
engaged in a deadly struggle with the Russians, and
now in the midst of luxury and splendour, the guest of
those former enemies."
The Embassy left Moscow on the 1st October, and
Sandwith arrived in England in due course, crossing
from Hamburg to Hull, and spending some time in
visiting old Yorkshire acquaintances. He passed the
autumn and the early part of the winter in visits and
in lecturing in many of the great towns. While wait
ing for the opening in the public service, which had
been more than half promised him, he had several
opportunities of taking up his old profession. For
example, the celebrated Dr. Simpson of Edinburgh
offered to take him as a kind of assistant, which would.

178 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
of course, have been professionaUy an excellent opening.
But as has been already said, Sandwith felt a real
disinclination for the caUing of a doctor, the truth,
perhaps, being that he felt his own inability to grapple
with the higher scientific problems which it presented,
while the ordinary routine did not interest him. In
military surgery, indeed, he always took a keen interest ;
and in the later years of his life a declaration of war
was a summons to him to bear his help towards the
organisation of the hospitals and the care of the wounded.
But he declined Dr. Simpson's offer, as he had in the
summer before declined the suggestions of more than
one leading London physician that he should practise
in town. Since General Williams's return from his captivity
in Russia, Sandwith and he had seen but little of one
another, and, indeed, the General's manner when they
did meet was not such as to encourage very close
intercourse. The truth is that he, who, though an
excellent officer, was not the wisest of men, was a little
put out by Sand-with's success, and took it unkindly
that his subordinate should have reaped the first-fruits
of the popular enthusiasm for the defenders of Kars,
while he (Williams) should only come in for the second
growth. As Sandwith had a real regard for Williams,
it was true wisdom on his part to keep as much as
possible out of the General's way, and to trust to time
to bring back normal relations between them. During
the autumn he had ample proofs that this had been the
prudent course, for Williams's ill-humour had passed by.

THE EMBASSY TO MOSCOW. 179
and he was as friendly as could be. Still, as Sandwith
confesses, his mortal fear was that the General should
intervene in his behalf with the Government, and ask
for some post for him, which he very well knew would
be a post inferior to what he thought he deserved, and
to what Lord Clarendon had given him grounds for
expecting. As to Williams himself, he was, to say the
least of it, not making way in public estimation, for it
was about this time that he embarked upon a bitter
controversy in the Times with Colonel Simmons, apropos
of Omer Pasha's disastrous campaign in Mingrelia ; and
in this controversy Williams, though his case was
extremely strong, spoilt it by the violence and bitterness
of his language. The antipathy between the two
officers was of the most intense kind and of old standing,
but it is hardly worth while at this distance of time to
re-vive a quarrel which was creditable to neither.
About this time fresh troubles were brewing in the
East, in consequence of the action of Persia, and
Sandwith turned his knowledge of Eastern life to good
account. " The offences of Persia," he writes, " had
culminated in overt acts of insolence to Mr. Murray, our
Ambassador, who had retired to Bagdad, hauling down
his flag, and England had declared war. The fall of
Kars was the cause of this difficulty. It had decided
Persia to listen to the counsels of Russia, and take the
part of the supposed stronger power. Unfortunately
for Persia, luckily for ourselves, we had abeady made
peace, and Russia was so much in need of rest that she
could do nothing in Persia's favour, so the latter was left

180 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
face to face with England. The vain and vapouring
courtiers of Teheran began already to parcel out India
among themselves, and to govern it by anticipation.
Of course, the London newspapers were full of the pro
posed war. No one knew anything about Persia, and
various were the surmises as to her strength, &c. I saw
in the Morning Post that England was about to raise
irregular cavalry in Turkey for service in Persia. I was
with Skene at the time, talking over the matter, and
presently I sat down, and with his aid drew up a paper
on the employment of irregular cavalry in Persia. As
I was not intimately acquainted with Mr. Vernon Smith,
our Minister of War, I sent my paper to Lord Granville,
asking him to forward it to the proper quarter if he
thought it worth anything. He at once forwarded it to
the Minister of War. Some weeks before I had written
to this Minister, asking him for a commission for a
nephew, and I had received a dry refusal from his private
secretary. A few days after the despatch of my paper
I received a private letter from him, saying that he had
been much interested in the perusal of it, and asking me
to visit him at Farming-woods, near Thrapstone. In
this charming and quaint old house I found a pleasant
party assembled, and after breakfast on the flrst morning
I retired with Mr. Vernon Smith into his study to talk
over the irregular cavalry question. He complimented
me highly on my paper, and asked me numerous
questions concerning officers, &c. In answering one of
these questions concerning the professional character of
an officer, I quoted Sir Henry Rawlinson. ' Oh,' said

THE EMBASSY TO MOSCOW. 181
Mr, Vernon Smith, ' I think nothing of his opinion ;
Rawlinson can never say a good-natured thing of any
one, ' which I thought a fair judgment. At the close
of our conference the Minister referred to my former
note asking for an appointment for my nephew. He
now gave me my choice of engineers, artillery, cavalry,
or infantry." At the end of the month Sandwith paid his first visit
since his return to his native town of Bridlington, and
lectured to the inhabitants, his reception being of the
most affecting kind. On returning to town he found
society much excited in consequence of a speech of Sir
Robert Peel, a lecture delivered at Taunton on the late
Russian Embassy. It was regarded as a singularly indis
creet performance, and it gave universal offence at home
and abroad, though, as the language was of the most
ultra-vernacular kind, the foreign newspapers found it
most difficult to translate. " I met Lord GranviUe,"
says Sandwith, " at the Athenaeum, and found him much
distressed. He told me that he had always had great
misgivings about taking Sir Robert Peel with him, but
Sir Robert had pressed him, and as he was a man of
great political influence, and the inheritor of a great
name, he had reluctantly yielded."
In January, 1857, after exactly a year of the busy
idleness of society and the hard work of literature
and lectures, the wished-for appointment came in sight.
While on a -visit to Mr. Raikes Currie at Hythe, his host
told him that he heard confldentially that the post of
Chief Secretary of the Ionian Islands was about to be

182 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
vacant, and advised him to apply for it. It was a post
of considerable importance, and that Sandwith should
aspire to it was thought by some to be presumptuous on
his part, but this was not the opinion of those in power.
Lord GranviUe forwarded his application, and Mr.
Labouchere, the Secretary for the Colonies, in answering
the letter, declared that it had always been his intention,
if the place at Corfu became vacant, to offer it to
Sandwith. At present it was not certain whether Sir
George Bowen, who then held the post, would accept
an offer made him elsewhere, so that nothing was for the
moment decided. How the appointment struck Sandvdth
and his old friend General Williams he has himself told
us, and the passage is perhaps worth quotation. " This
was dazzling ; here at last was I landed in a permanent
appointment, and that of a highly honourable kind.
The position and the rank were far beyond my most
sanguine hopes of a year ago ; and I could not but
reflect that two years before I was almost a penniless
adventurer, glad to take the uncertain and precarious
appointment of a surgeoncy to the Bashi-Bazouks. I
was profoundly happy, and of course sat down at once
to write a letter of thanks to the Minister.
" For many months past my dread had been General
WiUiams. He had entirely recovered his good nature
towards me. He had, indeed, indirectly apologised for
his previous coolness, and now he wanted to make up for
past grievances by rendering me a substantial service,
in other words, to get me an appointment. His fixed
idea was some petty Consulate, which indeed I should

THE EMBASSY TO MOSCOW. 183
have jumped at a few months before. On one occasion
when I called upon him he broached this subject, and
offered to ask for a Consulate for me. I trembled at the
thought, and said, ' Well, really General, you see it is
no easy matter to get any sort of appointment, and I
find I have gained a good deal of notoriety, so perhaps
I had better try to obtain a good private practice in
London.' The General cordially approved of this plan,
which he thought by far the wisest course, so I left him
completely harmless. He was glad to be relieved of the
task of asking for an appointment for me, as he had
several other people to provide for.
" After the receipt of Mr. Labouchere's letter, my
position was changed ; so I again called on Sir Fenwick
Williams. He received me with great cordiality.
' Well, Sandwith, how are you getting on ? Have you
any patients yet, eh ? ' ' Well, you see. General, getting
into a practice is a very slow and troublesome business ;
so I reconsidered my plans, and thought perhaps a really
pleasant appointment might be better, so I just asked
for the post of Chief Secretary of the Ionian Islands,
and they gave it me at once.'
" The General was fairly stunned. Had I announced
my appointment as Governor-General of India he could
scarcely have been more so. There was, however, no
bad blood in that honest nature. He congratulated me
frankly and sincerely, and it was obvious that I had
risen in his estimation."
It turned out that Sir George Bowen preferred, after
all, to remain in the Ionian Islands, and Sandwith was

184 IimiPHRY SANDWITH.
offered the post which had been intended for him, viz.,
that of Colonial Secretary, or First Minister, to the
Mauritius ; a post, as Mr. Labouchere described it, of
far higher political importance, and of greater emolu
ment than the other, but hampered by the unfavourable
conditions of distance, loneliness, and a tropical climate.
It was not, however, a post that could be declined, and
after some further negotiations he was gazetted to
Mauritius, on the 25th February, 1857. It may be
added that after his arrival in the Island, Sir George
Bowen again wished to change, and Sandwith would
have been very willing to gratify him ; but the Govern
ment itself had changed in the meantime, a new
Ministry was in power, and when Sir George Bowen
ultimately left the Ionian Islands his place was given, not
to Sandwith, but to the Minister's private secretary, Mr.,
now Sir Henry, Drummond Wolff.

CHAPTER XII.
MAURITIUS : MARRIAGE, AND THE EAST.
Arriving in Mauritius after a stormy voyage, Sandwith
found himself not only amid physical surroundings that
were wholly new and strange to him, but in a position
like nothing that he had known before. The Colonial
Secretary of a Crown Colony is really the Prime
Minister, having the initiative under the Governor —

MAURITIUS. 185
who may or may not be a man of activity — in all
legislative and administrative measures that concern the
welfare of the people. For such a post it might be
thought that official experience was indispensable, and
yet here was a man placed in it who, so to speak, had
never been inside a public office in his life ; who knew
absolutely nothing about the machinery of administra
tion, and who had nothing but his mother-wit to help
him in the decision of questions, however complicated
and however important. That he succeeded as well as
he did was greatly to his credit, though it may be
remarked that he had the advantage of serving under a
first-rate Governor, Mr. Stevenson, and of being helped
by the Assistant Colonial Secretary, Mr. Cummins,
whom he himself describes as one of the gentlest, best,
and most unselfish of men, and whose " coaching " in
all official details he found most valuable. But with aU
this help, he felt his official labours irksome, and during
his stay in the Mauritius he could seldom escape from
the nervous depression which, as all agree who have
long resided there, is almost epidemic in that hot, damp,
.and ungenial island.
At the same time there were numerous distractions ;
the society of the island was hospitable, and everybody
tried to make the life of the new Colonial Secretary as
agreeable as might be. He was charmed to meet again
his old friend Garreau, who, as may be remembered,
had lived with him as a medical student in London,
.and to whom, in point of fact, Sandwith owed his
.admirable colloquial knowledge of French. " Garreau,"

186 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
he writes, " had seen my name, and had heard that a
Dr. Sandwith was appointed Colonial Secretary, but he
did not identify him with his old chum, the positions
of medical student and Colonial Secretary seeming to
be too incongruous. I went to his house and met him
at the door ; he knew me at once, rushed into my arms,
and gave me a violent kissing."
Then there were pic-nics in the magnificent scenery
of the Mauritian Mountains, and the usual dinners and
balls with which Europeans solace themselves in the
tropics. There was a theatre to which any one might
go who could stand the temperature of an oven. There
was also a certain amount of sport ; and in later life
Sandwith used to talk of the chasse of the deer in
Mauritius as among the most interesting diversions of the
kind which he had ever known. He had, moreover,
numerous correspondents in England, letters to and
from whom occupied much of his leisure. One of these
was Delane, to whom Sandwith wrote giving him an
account of the system of immigration, the indentures of
Coolies, &c. " He took my letters," writes Sandwith,
" as texts for certain leading articles which he sent me.
These, as might have been expected, gave dire offence
to the coloured people of the island, and were answered
in their organ. Fortunately, I was not suspected of
being the private correspondent of the Times, otherwise
my position would have been made unendurable."
The official work of the island was regular, and in
that climate it was a considerable tax upon a man's
strength. We need not dwell upon the ordinary details-

MAURITIUS. 187
of it, but one incident at least has historical interest,
and may be told in Sandwith's words : —
"About this time we heard of the great Indian
Mutiny. It did not break upon us all at once, but bit
by bit. WhUe I was in the Red Sea, or shortly after
wards, I read a paragraph in some paper to the effect
that the natives were passing little unleavened cakes
from hand to hand across the country in a manner to
render the authorities uneasy ; and now we heard that
regiments here and there had mutinied, and that great
fears were entertained for the remainder.
"On the night of July 19, 1857, a steamer was
signalled to windward of the island. Next morning I
was summoned early to attend an Executive Council.
It was composed of the Governor, the Commander of
the troops, myself, the Procureur-General, and the
Secretary of the Council. The Governor reads us a
dispatch from the Government of India, asking lor aU
the troops we can spare, as the whole native army of
India is in revolt, excepting the troops of Madras and
Bombay, which Presidencies are in a doubtful state.
A long list of regiments in revolt or disarmed is shown
us. " A short discussion takes place. Old General Hay
naturally does not seem to like to part with his troops,
and talks of the danger the colony will be in with so
large a population of Indians. I combat this -view,
pointing out that the Indian coolies are unarmed and
peaceably disposed ; that they feel themselves strangers
in a distant land, and have whites, negroes, and mulattoes

188 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
to counteract them ; moreover, I urge that at such a
crisis we should be prepared to sacrifice ourselves and
the island rather than run the risk of losing India. We
decide to almost strip the island of troops, and so we
send off the 33rd Regiment, with a company of
artillery. " As time went by the news from India grew worse
and worse. It was a great satisfaction to us to hear in
September that our Mauritian contingent had just arrived
in Bombay in the very nick of time. It was said that a
mutiny would have broken out there within a few hours,
but when a large steamer, filled with red-coats, entered
the harbour, the would-be mutineers were cowed and all
was quiet. The stripping of our island of troops seems to
have given much uneasiness to the French part of the
population, for M. Delisle, Governor of Reunion, wrote
a confidential letter to the Governor, which he showed
me, offering him the command of a contingent of French
troops, in case he should see fit to avail himself of them.
This offer was declined with due thanks."
One of the most interesting events of Sandwith's
residence in Mauritius was his securing for the British
Museum an animal of which no complete example
existed in any European collection. " Before leaving
England," he writes, " I had asked Professor Owen if I
could procure for him anything in the way of zoology in
the Indian Ocean. He immediately told me of several
remarkable things that were wanted, first and foremost
some of the bones of the extinct bird the Dodo, whose
habitat was exclusively Mauritius. He thought that

MAURITIUS. 189
some of the bones might be found near the ruins of old
to-wns or villages. Then he told me that there was a
nocturnal animal in Madagascar called the Aye-aye,
some fragments of which had been procured by Cuvier,
which were in the Museum in Paris, no complete
specimen being kno-svn to science." The animal is a
variety of the Lemur, and is altogether a most curious
and exceptional creature. It lives principally on a kind
of beetle which burrows into the hard timber of the
Madagascar forests, and its structure is wonderfully
adapted for this task. Its teeth are of chisel form, its
ears are singularly acute, and aUow it to hear the
scratching of the beetle in the wood, while, from the
middle of the fore foot or hand there springs a long
crooked middle finger which the creature uses for the
purpose of hooking out its prey. By great good fortune
Sandwith was able to procure from some sailors trading
with Madagascar a living specimen of this very rare and
interesting animal, and the delight of Professor Owen
on hearing of the capture may weU be imagined. In an
enthusiastic mood he wrote off to Sandwith, saying,
" Since posting my letter to you, written last week, I
have had the great pleasure of receiving yours of
January 27th with the best and most graphic account
of the habits of a rare animal I ever perused. It is
worthy of Buffon. The proof," he adds, " of the
accuracy of your views of the Lemurine affinity of the
Aye-aye wiU come out of the thorough anatomy of the
animal, to which I shall be glad to devote myself this
autumn. They are so reckless on board ship that if the

190 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
poor beast should perish en voyage, ten to one it will be
thrown overboard or skinned, or at best so preserved in
a rum keg as to spoil the brain and much of the most
instructive anatomy. Have you your old anatomical
injecting syringe and pipe ? Have you tallow and fine
vermilion ? Could you quietly chloroform the rarity into
a better world, and then put the nozzle of the pipe into
the aorta and inject him ? " Then, after a few more
instructions, the Professor adds, " I think the Aye-aye
would then be in a state for a monograph dedicated by
R. 0. to H. S., which would supply a want long and
deeply felt by every philosophical zoologist in Europe.
If the council of the Zoological Society should know
what I have been recommending I should be howled out
of the society. The having the power to say that a
living Aye-aye had been shown or was to be seen in the
gardens is a supreme point with them. If it were pretty
certain that the Aye-aye would be cared for during the
voyage, doubtless it is a great point to have one alive.
It is a greater matter to have its anatomy secured for
the scientific world." Sandwith followed this advice,
and the animal duly arrived at the British Museum
in a keg of spirits. The result was the well-known
" Monograph on the Aye-aye," by Professor Owen, and
the creature itself is now, we believe, to be seen at
South Kensington.
The negotiations for an exchange to Corfu were
renewed in the spring of 1859, but, as we have already
mentioned, they came to nothing ; and in the September
of that year Sandwith quitted Mauritius on leave of

MAURITIUS. 191
absence, in the hope, which was fulfilled, that he would
never return. "I shall never forget," he writes, " the
joyful feeling I experienced on arriving at Cairo. I
felt quite at home once more, and should have been
content to remain in Egypt for the rest of my life had
a place been ready for me. I had never, strange to say,
suffered from nostalgia while in Turkey, but in Mauritius
I had the complaint very grievously." On arri-ving in
London he took up his old quarters in Duke Street, St.
James's, and once more entered, though with somewhat
greater moderation than of old, the round of English
social life. One of the chief of his new acquaintances
was Thackeray, with whom he became rather intimate.
"He told me,'' writes Sandwith, "that the mother of
Pendennis was painted from his own mother, and that
the rides of young Pendennis to and fro to see his
boyish love were his o-wn youthful rides when he lived
in the neighbourhood of Exeter. He told me that the
original of Becky Sharp lived in his neighbourhood.
He mentioned also the original of the romantic Miss
Amory, and related how he once traveUed -with her in a
railway carriage, and cut his finger. She tore what
was apparently a costly cambric pocket-handkerchief,
and exclaimed, ' See what I have sacrificed for you ! ' — •
but he detected her hiding the common rag which she
had torn. Thackeray told me that ' Vanity Fair ' was
rejected by many magazines and publishers before it
saw the light."
In the spring of 1860, his leave having been extended
by the Duke of Newcastle, who was Secretary for the

192 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
Colonies in the new Whig Government, Sandwith
became engaged to Miss Lucy Hargreaves, a charming
and beautiful girl of a well-known Lancashire family.
They were married on May 29th, but before his marriage
he had taken a very important, and, as he afterwards
thought, mistaken step. "I had intended," he writes,
" to return to Mauritius, much as I disliked the place,
but from the beginning of March I unluckily found
that my health was failing, and my medical adviser
told me that if I returned to a tropical climate I should
probably die rapidly. I determined therefore to resign,
and after a year or two ask for another post. Herein I
made a huge blunder. I ought to have held on to my
post by my teeth. The Duke of Newcastle told me
that they would be only too delighted to give me further
employment ; but he died, and ' another king arose who
knew not Joseph.' After years of appUcations and
ante-chambering I gave up the pursuit in disgust."
In July the newly-wedded couple started for a long
tour abroad, and Sandwith derived great benefit from
the baths of Aix. "At Turin," he says, "I called on
our Minister, Sir James Hudson, who had aided mate
rially in. the unification of Italy. I thought I had
never seen him before, but he showed me a scarred and
mutilated hand, and told me that my father, thirty
years before, had saved it from amputation. While
young Hudson was shooting at Bessingby, near Brid
lington, a gun had burst and shattered the hand, and
the local surgeons proposed to amputate it, but the
young man's father objected to anything being done

MAURITIUS. 193
until young Sandwith, my father, had seen the patient.
He took upon himself the responsibility of not ampu
tating the limb. I well remembered as a child of seven
seeing the dressing of the hand, which made a great
impression on me." It is curious to note on the same
page of the diary the following extract : — " On the 26th
June I heard that Turkuri, the young Hungarian officer
who, under Garibaldi, led the chief assault on Palermo,
is buried there with great pomp and amidst the tears of
the population. He was a fine young Hungarian of
about thirty, who served with us in Kars, and whose
arm I saved about that time from amputation." Like
his father, Sandwith was very much averse to extreme
measures in surgery, and those who knew him at a later
date will remember how he used to tell of his frequent
interference, during the Servian and Russo-Turkish
campaigns, with the rash proceedings of hasty and
amateur surgeons anxious to distinguish themselves at
the expense of the limbs of their patients.*
A winter on the Nile set Sandwith up in health, and
in the spring he found himself, to his great satisfaction,
able to fulfil an old dream, and to take his bride for a
tour into the genuine East. It was but a few months
since the dreadful massacres of the Lebanon and of
Damascus had taken place ; and though Lord Duffeiin
was established as British Commissioner at Beyrout it
required no little determination for an English couple to
visit Damascus. Lord Dufferin, however, who received
them very kindly, did not discourage them, and they
* For a notable case of this kind see p. 225.

194 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
pushed on. " While at Beyrout," he writes, " I renewed
my acquaintance (a slight one) with the notorious Risk
AUah Bey, whose career in Europe was, to say the least,
remarkable. Originally a servant, but being a handsome,
clever fellow, with caressing manners, he had married an
Englishwoman with money. She had a bastard son, to
whom she left her money, and if he died her husband
was to have it. She died, and then, just before the son
came of age, he was found shot, apparently by his own
hand, in his room at Brussels. Suspicion was so strong
against Risk Allah that he was tried for his life, but
nothing could be proved against him, and he was
acquitted. "At Beyrout also I saw Tahir Pasha, an Erzeroum
acquaintance, one of the most guilty of the Turkish
officers concerned in the massacres of the Lebanon. He
was educated at Woolwich, and spoke English very well.
At Erzeroum he had won the heart of General WilUams,
who had him raised to the rank of Ferik. He was at
bottom a genuine Turk, with nothing but a varnish of
civilisation, for he aided and abetted his troops in the
perpetration of some of the most horrible atrocities.
" Admiral Munday commanded the British squadron
lying off the Syrian coast. I caUed on him, and he gave
me a most interesting account of the armistice at
Palermo last year. He told me that Garibaldi, when
¦discussing the terms of it in his cabin with the
Neapolitan officers, was most arrogant in his claims, and
for two hours fought inch by inch for even the most
unimportant items, and when refused any point talked

MAURITIUS. 195
of driving the king's army into the sea. All this time
he was actually at the mercy of the Royalists, had they
but known the fact that he was in want of powder,
and had only about seven hundred fighting men to set
against 25,000 troops."
They pushed on to Damascus, and emerged from that
half-ruined city unharmed, returning thence to Beyrout
to embark for Rhodes and Constantinople. It may be
imagined with what pleasure Sandwith did the honours
of the city to his bride, and wandered with her through
the scenes amongst which he had spent so many hard but
delightful years. It was just about the time when
Abdul Medjid died, worn out by debauchery, at the age
of thirty-five, and when his brother Abdul Aziz suc
ceeded, amid the congratulations of the official class in
England, who pretended to beUeve that he was humane,
courageous, and the virtuous husband of one wife. It
was well known to Sandwith and to others at
Constantinople that the new Sultan was in every respect
as bad as the old one, with the addition of having a much
less mild and merciful disposition.
There is little to record of the next few years of
Sandwith's life. He returned to England, and, finding
London distasteful, took quarters in various parts
of the country, first for a while in Berkshire and
afterwards in Wales. His main interest from this
time forward came to be political, for it was about
the end of 1801 that, mainly through his wife's relative,
Mr. William Hargreaves, a prominent Lancashire
Liberal, he was brought under the influence of Cobden,

196 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
and began to give that close attention to EngUsh
domestic politics which he had till now given exclusively
to the affairs of the East. He missed, however, his one
really good chance of entering Parliament. Early in
1862 some connections of his, very influential in the
borough of Wycombe, proposed to him to come forward
for the seat about to be vacated by Sir George Dash-
wood. There is no doubt that Sandwith would have
been elected, and probably without a contest, and had
this happened his future life would have been hajjpier
and in some respects more useful than was actually the
case. Unfortunately, though his income was now ample,
he was for the moment slightly in debt, and he declined
the honour as being likely to prove too expensive. In
after years he always regarded his refusal to stand for
Wycombe as a most lamentable mistake — a mistake that
he vainly endeavoured to repair in 1868, when he offered
himself for Marylebone,
On May 29th, 1862, his flrst child was born, and
was named Catherine Sinclair, after the well-known
novelist, for it had been through her introduction in
Edinburgh that Sandwith had flrst met Miss Hargreaves.
Four other children followed in due time.
We may mark the beginning of 1863 as the period
at which Sandwith deflnitely began to take sides on the
Eastern Question, and to embark upon the course -with
which during the later years of his life his name was
commonly identified. " In the early part of May," he
writes, " I heard that some members were about to bring
on a debate on Turkey, basing it chiefly on the bombard-

MAURITIUS. 197
ment of Belgrade. I was asked to assist Mr. Gregory,*
an Irish member, in giving him facts on which to base
his arguments, and I called upon him to offer my
services. While with him I was introduced to a gentle
man of prepossessing appearance and of decidedly
Slavonic face. [This was the Senator Philip Christitch,
the well-known Servian statesman and diplomatist, who
during last year (1883) was Minister in London.] He
had been sent on a tour through Europe, in company with
the Princess of Servia, with a -view to influence public
opinion in favour of the Servian cause. I had an-inter-
esting conversation with Mr. Gregory, and promised to
return, bringing withme documents. Then Mr. Christitch
and I went off together in his brougham. I then told
him that my eyes had been so opened to the iniquities of
Turkish rule that I was determined to devote all my
leisure and energies to assist those who were struggUng
against the horrid bane. The Senator impulsively seized
my hand and poured out his thanks, and from that
moment we became the best of friends."
¦ We may briefly recall the incident which had
brought the dispute between Turkey and her
dependency into the acute stage. In the year 1862
Turkey still retained the right of garrisoning certain
Servian fortresses, especiaUy that of Belgrade. Not
only was the Citadel occupied by Turkish troops — an
evU which might have been endured — but the Turks
insisted on occupying fom- of the inner gates of the
* Now Sir William Gregory, well known for his advocacy of the claims
of Arabi and the " Nationalists " in Egypt.

198 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
town ; which, as was said in the House of Commons at
the time, had as much to do with the fortifications of
Belgrade as Temple Bar or Holborn Bars might have
had to do with those of London. The presence of these
small bodies of soldiers in the midst of a population
who detested them, and whom they constantly insulted,
was naturally the cause of perpetual irritation; and
accordingly diplomatic efforts were freely made by
Servia to induce the Porte to -withdraw to the Citadel.
The proposals of the Prince of Servia were of course
met by the delays which are a proverbial feature of
Turkish policy — for the Porte well knows, as the Arab
proverb puts it, that " a Turk on a broken- winded donkey
would tire a gazelle to death." M. Garaschanin, the
Servian Envoy, returned to Belgrade, warning Turkey
that an outbreak must occur ; and disputes and brawls
began to be the order of the day. At last, on June 15,
a Servian boy, who had strayed near to a Turkish
guardhouse, was caught and beaten to death by two
Turkish soldiers ; the Servian gendarmes came to the
rescue ; there was a struggle, a furious attack on the
guardhouses, and a good deal of, bloodshed. At last a
truce was made, and the Pasha, the Consuls, and the
Servian Prime Minister signed a convention arranging
that the offending Turks should be taken out of the
guardhouse and handed over to the Pasha. This was
done, and it was believed that peace and quiet were
restored; when suddenly, on the morning of the 16th,
the Pasha began to bombard the undefended town. At
last the Austrian Consul-General made his way into the

MAURITIUS. 199
Citadel and persuaded the Pasha to stop ; while, to
prevent the renewal of the bombardment, the French
Consul-General pitched his tent on the glacis of the
fortress and the English Consul-General (Mr. Longworth)
pitched his in front of the Servian barricades. The effects
of the act of the Turkish commander were immense. His
artillerymen, indeed, made bad practice, and caused
little material destruction ; but the panic among the
inhabitants and among those with whom they had deal
ings was very great. The imports into the town during
the half-year following the bombardment fell one-half.
Confidence was destroyed. No man knew whether or
when a new bombardment and a wholesale massacre
might begin. Turkish ferocity had been let loose for a
moment ; would it not soon break out again ?
" About the 29th May the great debate came off.
Mr. Gregory made a splendid speech against Turkish
rule, and he was answered by Layard, in his usual
style. An amusing incident of the debate referred to
me. I had given either Gregory or another speaker
a quotation from a Turkish law book, which was very
telling as showing how bitterly unbelievers are regarded
by the Turks. This quotation was cited, but I had
anticipated that Layard would sneer at it, and say that
the passage was as misleading as a similar one would be
from the laws of Queen Elizabeth against the Catholics,
and that in these modern times all was changed, and
any sort of persecution was obsolete. I wrote a note
to Cobden to this effect, showing that the principles of
the book quoted were in full vigour in all the rural

200 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
and remote parts of the Empire, and warning him that
Layard would use this style of argument. As I had
foreseen, so did it happen, and after Layard had spoken
Cobden made a very telling reply, and read my letter
amid roars of laughter. I fancy Layard never forgave
this." In point of fact, Sandwith was about this time
engaged in a private controversy with Layard on
Turkish matters. They could never come to an agree
ment, and fourteen years afterwards, when Lord
Beaconsfield appointed Layard to succeed Sir Henry
Elliot as Ambassador in Constantinople, and as the
chief instrument in carrying out the policy which
Sandwith had by that time learned to dislike
more and more, the old friendship between the two
came to a rather unfortunate end. When political
questions are as serious and as far-reaching in their
ramifications as was the Eastern Question in 1877,
private friendship often unhappily gives way under the
strain. About six months after the birth of his second child
Sandwith was adventurous enough to set out, taking
family and nurses with him, on a visit to Servia.
Christitch found them tolerable apartments in Belgrade.
Thence Sandwith and his wife took occasional trips into
the interior, and came to conceive a great affection for the
simple people of that country. " While at Belgrade,"
he writes, "we were charmed with the extreme sim
plicity of the domestic habits of the Servians. Their
social condition is absolutely democratic. I was once

MAURITIUS. 201
walking with Senator Christitch, who had formerly been
Prime Minister, and asked him to recommend me a shop
where I could buy an umbrella. He at once told me
that his brother-in-law had a shop where they sold
umbrellas, and we forthwith purchased one there.. I
found an old tradesman, a Greek, named Hadji Toma,
who had three or four daughters, each of them married
to a Minister. Most of the latter were the sons of
peasants. We engaged a hausknecht, and we found that
he was an undergraduate of the university, and required
certain hours for his classes." In June they went down
the Danube, and for a trip into Wallachia ; and as they
passed the Bulgarian shores they observed vessels being
discharged of Circassian refugees who were flying from
Russian government. These were the men who had
long resisted Russian conquest, and who were now
availing themselves of the feeble, inefficient, and dis
honest aid of the Turkish authorities to find a refuge
in Turkish territory. The world heard enough about
these Circassians and their misdeeds twelve years later,
but it is interesting to remark that at this very time Sand
with accurately foretold the events of 1876. His auto
biography contains a copy of a letter which he wrote
from Bulgaria to the Spectator newspaper on June 22,
1864. In this letter he first describes the cargoes of
Circassians whom he sees being landed, and proceeds :
" The most horrible misrule in these Danubian pro
vinces has created a somewhat dangerous discontent
amongst the Christians. To cope with this a larger
Mussulman element was wanted to play the part of the

202 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
Druses in Syria, and these Circassians, burning with
hatred to aU Christians, come ready to hand; so thou
sands of them are being turned into Bulgaria amongst
the most industrious, long-suffering people in Turkey.
The next Christian massacre will probably
be in Bulgaria!'
In Bucharest Sandwith saw a great deal of the
persons who had been mostly concerned in the
unsuccessful Servian rising, and heard from Consul-
General Green many stories as to the secret manner
in which Russian arms had been conveyed across
Roumania into Servian territory. It was in the stirring
times of Prince Couza, who, having shortly before
carried out a successful but bloodless coup-d'etat, and put
down the aristocratic Boyards, was himself soon to lose
his power in much the same way. " It was Couza's
fate," -writes Sandwith, "not long afterwards, to suffer
himself from a coup-d'etat, for having become a sort of
Dictator, a band of conspirators, of whom the chief was
my old friend Prince Ion Ghika, stole into the palace at
midnight, and arresting his highness escorted him to the
frontier." The subsequent accession of Prince Charles
of Hohenzollern, the present king, is matter of history.
Returning homewards, they spent the summer at
the delightful town of Gratz, in Austria, and soon
afterwai-ds they settled for some years at Llanrhaiadr
Hall, near Denbigh.
Here Sandwith completed a novel of Eastern life,
aud published it under the title of " The Hekim Bashy ;
or, the Adventures of Giuseppe Antonelli : a Doctor

MAURITIUS. 203
in the Turkish Service." The book, which teemed
with incidents based on his own observation, made
comparatively little impression in England, but it
was hailed with delight in Servia and the Christian
provinces of Turkey as a forcible exposure of many of
the foul abuses of Turkish government. Besides this,
amid the usual avocations of a country gentleman, he
had plenty of time to take a considerable part, both on
the platform and in the press, in the discussion of the
political questions which were then dividing England
with an intensity that had not been known for many
years. It will be remembered that 1865 was the year of
the Jamaica riots and their suppression, and 1866 the
year of the great Reform agitation. On both these
questions Sandwith threw in his lot with the advanced
section of the Liberal party. He was a very active
member of the Jamaica Committee, and he spoke and
wrote copiously and effectively on the question of reform.
It was not, however, till the dissolution in the autumn
of 1868 that he made any attempt to enter Parliament.
When that opportunity came he was urged to offer
himself for Marylebone in opposition to the sitting
Liberal members — whose conduct was not approved by
the more advanced leaders of the party. He came forward
with the support of a great number of influential friends,
Mr. J. S. Mill and Mr. Goldwin Smith being prominent
among them. He made a good flght and polled 5,607
votes ; but this was not enough by over 3,000, and thus
his only actual attempt to re-enter public life was a
faUure. But that his later years were not without their

204 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
share in works of public usefulness, will be evident from
the account of his conduct during the great wars by
which those years will always be remembered, as well as
from the active part that he took in the strenuous and
embittered controversy which surged around the Eastern
Question.

CHAPTER XIII.
1870—1876.
THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR.
At the beginning of 1870 Sandwith had been for some
two years established in a pleasant old house near Llan
dovery, in Carmarthenshire, bearing the strange name
of LI wyny wormwood Park. It cannot be said that his
settlement in this place was altogether a success, for he
had much to put up with from the singular backward
ness of the society of the neighbourhood, and he was
more than usually unlucky in his landlord. Friends of
his later years will remember that the eccentricities, and
worse, of this worthy — a reverend baronet — were a
fruitful subject of conversation with him to the day of
his death, and almost took the place of Mesopotamia as
a source of entertaining anecdotes. But he found a
certain amount of interesting occupation in encouraging
and helping to organise the Liberal politicians of South
Wales. He frequently lectured, or presided at lectures,
on the events of the day. He held social gatherings at
his own house of the tenant farmers and Nonconformist

THE FRANCO- GERMAN WAR. 205
ministers of the region, who were as much surprised on
their side, as the neighbouring Tory squires were on
theirs, to flnd it possible for a gentleman who was fond
of shooting, and who lived in a big house, to be a
consistent Radical in politics. The -wildness of the
country, and the excellence of the shooting, were de
lightful to him. When he flrst inspected the property
he was charmed -with the solitudes, the stretches of
half-cultivated moorland, and the beautiful oak-woods
that clothed the spacious hill-sides. " It is as good as
Asia Minor," he used to say, and with him that was
the highest conceivable term of praise. Generally,
during the autumn and winter, he had with him one or
two friends who could sympathise with his enthusiasm
and enjoy sharing his rambles over the hills, and the
writer of these pages for one looks back upon those
days as some of the happiest of his life.
But when in July, 1870, the great war broke out
between France and Germany, Sandwith felt caUed to
devote himself to other and more serious occupations
for a season. The terrible carnage of Worth and For
bach revealed the fact which every one had foreseen — -
that even in an army as well organised as that of Ger
many there was great need of surgical aid for the
wounded. Sandwith lost no time in presenting himself
before the National Aid Society in London, the Chairman
of which was Colonel Loyd-Lindsay, and was by them
sent off to the seat of war. The Governor of Mainz
readily granted him a pass, and he pushed on at once to
Saarbriick by special train; his first experience of that

206 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
civilised kind of war where armies are moved about on
railways, and where military passes, market-tenders,
and such like are the order of the day. The sights
which he saw, and the misery which he helped to relieve,
were such as to deepen and to strengthen that horror of
war which had gradually been growing upon him, and
which from this time forward coloured his whole political
action. He was most kindly received by the Germans
wherever he went, and formed the highest opinion, not
only of their purely military qualities, but of their
patience and good-nature under difficulties, and of their
kindness to the suffering, whether friends or foes. As
to his hospital experience, the details of it are too
sickening to be printed. Let it suffice to say that he,
from morning till night, was ready to echo the words of
Lord Stratford de Redcliffe — " Of all the results of war,
wounds and diseases are the least questionable," His
opinion of the members of his old profession was greatly
enhanced by what he saw during this campaign, "There
is no professional body of men," he writes, " so nobly
disinterested as medical men. Here were men working
hard — morning, noon, and night — in the midst of sights
and sounds of appalling human agony, and daily and
hourly risking their lives from the infection of typhus
and the deadly poison of active animal virus from bad
wounds. What makes it more surprising is that these
hard-working men were not military doctors at aU.
The military surgeons were hard at work to the front,
and these were civil surgeons who had got what they
called a holiday, which they were spending in the hos-

THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR. 207
pitals, thus doing an immense service to their country."
He speaks in like terms of the Sisters of Mercy. " I
could not but be struck with the gentle devotion of the
Sisters of Mercy as they tended the wounded. They
lived incessantly in the hospitals, they washed and
dressed the foulest wounds, they soothed the dying men
with the softest, most unobtrusive, and most efficient
attentions. These dear Sisters of Mercy are the very
salt of the earth.
" I visited the various field hospitals of Metz, and
procured for them sundry necessaries from the stores
of the National Society of London. Amongst many
new friends I made at Saarbriick was a young ad
venturous EngUsh clergyman, bent upon seeing some
thing of the war, but unable to get to the front on
account of being nothing official. I offered him the
post of my private secretary — a handsome appointment
— the duties of which were to copy my letters, to keep
my accounts, to cook for me when necessary, to wash up
the things, to arrange the straw and blankets for our
beds, and to make himself generally useful. He was to
have no pay, but to defray his own expenses ! Mr.
Reginald Gatty, my new friend, eagerly accepted the
appointment, and performed its duties with all the
eagerness of one not many years from Eton. Poor
fellow, he was eventually taken violently ill at a remote
village near Metz, and I had to "convey him to the rail
way station at CourceUes. When he left me I went on
to Pont-a-Mousson. "¦ At Pont-a-Mousson I heard that an American had

208 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
arrived famous for disinfecting to-wns and hospitals, and
that he was about to disinfect this town, which in truth
sadly needed it. I was anxious to see the American,
and to learn some new chemical facts from him. I
heard that he was to attend a sort of sanitary meeting
at the house of one of the chief Prussian authorities, to
which I had been previously invited. I rejoiced at this,
and was punctual in my attendance. There were
sundry counts and barons there, members of the Order
of St. John, who were supplying the hospitals and
making themselves useful. I asked my friend. Baron
Ompteda, when the American gentleman was to arrive.
He asked the president, and he looked at me, and there
ensued some conversation which ended in general
laughter. It appears that the supposed American was
no other than myself. I had disinfected Saarbriick to
a certain extent, and so had made my reputation, but
why I was considered an American I cannot tell. I
very soon had the municipality of Pont-a-Mousson
assembled, and proposed the same work there, and in a
few days many labourers were busy cleaning the town,
white-washing the buildings, and doing something
towards checking the typhus that was raging in the
military hospitals ; but my means were very limited, or
I could have saved hundreds of lives.
" While I was at Pont-a-Mousson, vexed to see how
little could be done, a doctor just arrived from England
told me that the Society had raised above £100,000. I
at once posted off to London and found it true, and
found, moreover, that the Committee were fumbling

THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR. 209
about in the most imbecile manner. Loi'd Overstone
seemed to be the active spirit, or rather the inactive
one, for his great idea was hoarding. I had a pre
liminary interview with him, and when I described to
him the suffering of the sick and wounded, and urged a
liberal expenditure, he interrupted me by the remark
that ' that was not business.' I requested that a com
mittee meeting should be called, and that I should meet
it. Next day the Committee met. There were Lord
Overstone, Lord Shaftesbury, Sir Harry Verney, and
sundry others. I spoke very plainly, and told them
the}'- were doing very little with the money collected,
and that it was astonishing that in a Society, called ' The
Sick and Wounded Society,' there should not be a single
surgeon upon it. ' What would you say,' I observed,
' if London were besieged, and a committee of defence
were formed, containing not a single military man ? ' On
this Col. Loyd-Lindsay started up, brought out the
list of the Committee, and showed the name of a doctor.
' That,' said I, ' is the name of a fashionable ac
coucheur ; what does he know of military surgery ? ' "
Sandwith wished to return to the seat of war, but
the Committee were unwilling to employ a man who
criticised them so freely. He went home, and his life
again became that of a peaceable English citizen. In
the next year he settled at the Old House, Wimbledon,
which remained his head-quarters till his death. There
are few incidents to record during the next years, except
in connection with the question which, after having been
in abeyance since the Peace of Paris, vras now again
o

210 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
ripening for solution. It has been already said that his
interest in the East had been silently transferring itself
from the races of Asia Minor to those of European
Turkey, and especially to the half -emancipated princi
pality of Servia. At the same time, he kept his eye
upon the further East, and he was in the confidence of
more than one individual whose dislike of Turkish rule
did not always confine itself to mere words. The story
of one of these men is characteristic, and may here be
told. Four years before the date at which we have
arrived — that is, early in 1867 — Sandwith received a
mysterious letter from an old Levant acquaintance,
Eugene O'Reilly. " This man," he writes, " had had
a chequered career. In 1848 he was a student of Trinity
College, Dublin, and, being more full of enterprise than
of caution, he had flung himself into the Smith O'Brien
RebeUion, had got arrested, and suffered a short impri
sonment. Obliged to leave home, he enlisted in a
cavalry regiment, and having learned his regimental
duties, he left on the breaking out of troubles in Italy,
joined the Sardinian army, and obtained a commission.
When the Crimean War began he offered his sword to
the Sultan, and his services were accepted. He served
with great credit on the Danube, and I first made his
acquaintance at that time, when he and I were serving
at Shumla under Omer Pasha. After this he was em
ployed in various capacities in different parts of the
Turkish Empire. He was every inch a soldier; a
splendid rider, brave as his sword, with a strong dash
of the Bohemian, and, unfortunately, -with a strong

THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR. 211
hankering also after financial speculation. In other
words, like many revolutionists in all ages, he embarked
upon revolutionary schemes partly from sheer love of
adventure, and partly from the hope that out of the
general confusion something might turn up for him.
"Some time before this date, 1867, he had been
made use of by a clique of English financiers in some
rather questionable financial affair connected with the
consolidation of the Turkish Debt ; an affair out of
which the financiers made £20,000 apiece, and O'Reilly
got for his share £5,000, which effectually whetted his
appetite for this kind of spoil. O'ReiUy told me that
one of the jobs he was charged with was to bribe the
editor of a Constantinople newspaper who was strongly
denouncing what he called the nefarious scheme of these
financiers. The editor accepted £500, and then changed
his opinions. " His present business was to arrange an interview
with me, and accordingly he visited me in Wales, and
detailed to me his grand scheme. He wished to put
himself at the head of an insurrection in Asia Minor,
and, acquainted with the country as he was, and passing
for a Mussulman — for he was known as Hussein Bey —
he felt confident of giving a shock to the Ottoman
Empire which might even destroy it. As he went on
to detail his scheme, it came out that he was the instru
ment of a Turkish intrigue, the main figure being
Mustapha Fazy Pasha, brother of the Viceroy of Egypt,
and at that time one of the Cabinet Ministers at the
Porte. This man, of course, had aims of his own ; he

212 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
wished to make Syria impossible for the Porte to govern,
to have it joined to Egypt, and himself to be somehow
or other made Viceroy. O'Reilly's plans were not
absolutely cut and dried, the details being left for the
future ; but his idea was to undertake some kind of sur
veying scheme, to work his way to the Bedouins, and
from there to commence operations.
" As soon as O'Reilly developed his plans to me, I
saw that such an opportunity would be excellent for
Servia to take advantage of. I therefore wrote off
immediately to a Servian friend, asking him to come to
Wales and meet a friend on a matter of great importance.
He at once took my letter to the Prince, who sanctioned
his journey, so he arrived after a few days, and we had a
conference together. At this time Crete was in open
revolt, Servia was urging upon the Porte the evacua
tion of her fortresses, and the Prince had formed a sort
of alliance with Montenegro, Greece, and Roumania.
My Servian friend telegraphed in cipher O'Reilly's
proposal, and was instructed passively to encourage it,
not to lose sight of it, but not absolutely to commit
himself. " A year after, while I was electioneering, I came
across a short paragraph in a newspaper which announced
that O'Reilly had been arrested and charged with
conspiracy. I may here give a letter from a friend in
Turkey to O'ReUly's brother, which tells the story of
his proceedings and capture from one point of view.
" ' Colonel O'Reilly had a permission from the
Ottoman Government for surveying and making a plan

THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR. 213
for a tramway from the copper mines of Argasia, in
Mesopotamia, to some seaport on the coast of Syria. He
had sent engineers there as far back as November last
year. These were at work between Tripoli, in Syria,
and Hamah. On the 18th June last year, your brother
left Constantinople and proceeded to Beyrout in the
same steamer with Franco Pasha, the new Governor of
the Lebanon. At Beyrout he did not find the
Kaimakam, or local Governor, very much disposed in his
favour, and when he applied for a guard to protect him
during his progress and stay in the desert the Kaimakam
refused. As you are aware, your brother was, some five
or six years ago, the commander of the whole gen
darmerie forces in Syria. This circumstance brought
him in contact with some of the men who had served
under him in former times ; he enlisted and armed a
number of them to serve as a body guard, and proceeded
to the desert. Having advanced as far as Homs with
his survey, he meant to extend the same to the shores of
the Euphrates, for which purpose he required a number
of camels to carry his instruments, apparatus, and some
of his workmen.
" ' He purchased these animals of an English lady of
some notoriety in the chronique scandaleuse, the former
Lady EUenborough, who is now called Mrs. Digby, the
companion of Medjuel, a sheikh of the Misral tribe of
Bedouins, who has made a fortune by levying black-mail
on the travellers going to visit the ruins of Palmyra.
The sheikh refused to give up the camels, nor would he
refund the money which Mrs. Digby had pocketed.

214 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
Thereupon your brother joined a tribe of Bedouins
hostile to that of Mrs. Digby, attacked and routed them,
took several thousand camels, of which your brother
only retained those he had bought and paid for ; but in
the melee he and his party had the misfortune to kill a
Bedouin woman. Mrs. Digby went to Damascus and
made complaint against the colonel, through the
medium of the British Consul there, to the Ottoman
authorities. The Governor- General sent 2,000 men, who
surrounded your brother, and he surrendered.'
" This was the story for the defence, but not the true
one. The fact was, that before this fiasco O'ReiUy had
spent some months in preparation, and had collected a
large quantity of arms and hidden them in various
places, some in a cemetery among the corpses. About
£5,000 worth had been sent from England. Every
thing was prepared, but unfortunately he had been
indiscreet in his choice of confidants. Among them
was, I am told, a British Consul, who entered eagerly
into O'Reilly's schemes, which he highly applauded,
and then regularly wrote home full accounts of them
to the Foreign Office. Mrs. Digby was another who
betrayed him, so that the 2,000 men were quite ready,
and pounced upon O'Reilly the moment he committed
an overt act of violence. The attack on the Arab tribe
was to procure camels and to commence the insurrec
tion, which would have spread. I was anxious for
O'Reilly to succeed, as I hoped to see the beginning
of the end of that organisation of brigandage, the
Ottoman Empire. General Ignatieff, Russian Ambas-

THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR. 215
sador at the Porte, was one of his confidants, and aided
him without committing himself.
" When I heard that he was arrested, I set to work
to try and get him released, and I judged that he
would probably escape punishment, as he had luckily
not been shot off-hand, as in any trial some very big
Pashas, Cabinet Ministers, and the like would be
implicated. I was right in my surmise ; it seems that
when the troops appeared, O'Reilly saw at once that
he had been betrayed, and wisely surrendered himself
while he had a good defence to fall back upon. He
and his companions were thrown into prison, and lay
there many weeks. They were eventually let loose in
an irregular and Turkish fashion, and then I saw
O'Reilly again in England, none the worse for his
confinement." The sequel to O'Reilly's story may here be told. He
did not again trouble the Porte with his insurrectionary
activity, and before the great war came he had ceased
to live. Sandwith came across him once again in
connection with a scheme for developing the railway
system of Servia, of which we shall have more to say.
"After this," writes Sandwith, "poor, adventurous,
brave O'Reilly undertook a mission for some financiers
to Morocco. He caught dysentery on the road, and
perished in some miserable place. His end was melan
choly, but he probably thereby escaped much misery,
for latterly he had become destitute and desperate."
Sandwith's name was already very well known in
Servia. He was in frequent communication with his

216 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
friend PhUip Christitch, and might be regarded as a
sort of confidential adviser of the Servian National
Party in all matters that touched their relations with
Western Europe. His novel, " The Hekim Bashy," had
been translated into Servian, and had made a great
sensation in that country, far more sensation, it must
be owned, than it had caused in England, where at the
time of its appearance the public interest in Eastern
affairs was dormant. Had the work been written in
1856, or in 1876, everybody would have read it ; but in
1864 the adventures of an European in the Turkish
ser-vice seemed to appeal to few readers. However,
it served its purpose as far as Eastern Europe was
concerned, and Sandwith received many a flattering
testimony of the impression which this record of
Turkish abominations had made upon the minds of
readers in Servia, Bulgaria, and Greece.
When, in 1872, the young Prince MUan of Servia
came of age, after having been for four years under the
tutelage of a Council of Regency, the municipality of
Belgrade invited Sandwith to attend the coronation. He
went, and was much interested in the festivities, which,
of course, developed into a Pan-Slavist demonstration
against the neighbouring powers of Austria and Turkey.
There were banquets, with intensely patriotic speeches,
especially from a Bosnian, who brought tears to the
eyes of every guest by his description of the wrongs of
his countrymen ; there were reviews of troops, at which
people talked without constraint of the coming struggle
between the Slav races and their Turkish masters.

THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR. 217
Then Sandwith and the Bosnian orator, whose name was
Stefano Petranovich, made a delightful tour in Bosnia,
of which country he gave an account — the first of the
many accounts that those years were destined to witness —
in Eraser's Magazine. Another visit to Servia followed
in the next year, the business this time being apparently
of a very practical character. O'Reilly, whose schemes,
.as has been said, were sometimes political and sometimes
financial, and generally both, was now giving his mind
to a matter which has since then occupied the great
financial circles of Europe to no small extent. This was
the construction of a system of railways and other
public works in Servia, beginning with the Belgrade-
Alexinatz line, which was to form a junction with the
line leading through Sofia and Adrianople to Constanti
nople. O'ReiUy had some very solid capitalists at his
back, and all that was wanted was the concession, in the
obtaining of which it was thought that Sandwith could
be very influential. Accordingly, proposals were made
to him to undertake a mission to Servia with the object
of gaining this concession; and though he knew ab
solutely nothing of finance, and less of the construction
of railways, he thought himself justified in undertaking
the task, which if successfully performed would inevitably
result in a great development of the resources of a
country to which he was sincerely attached. It is not
necessary to go into the details of this mission, which
occupied a considerable part of the year 1873. Suffice
it to say that, as usual in these cases, he found himself at
Belgrade in the midst of a network of cross interests

218 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
and of contending intrigues, and that after success had
often sesmed within his grasp, and promises had been
made and all but signed and sealed, he had the mortifi
cation of finding that the work was to be put into other-
hands, and that the English capitaUsts who were hoping
to undertake it were to be disappointed. The Prime
Minister at this time, and practically the absolute ruler-
of the country, was Ristics, who was then and is still
probably the ablest man in Servia, though he was a man
in whom Sandwith had no confidence, and with whom he
was on no very cordial terms.
One incident of this visit is worth recording.
" On May 16th," Sandwith writes, " I called at the
Prefecture on business. While waiting there in one of
the ante-rooms, I heard noises which puzzled me exceed
ingly. These were moans and cries of distress exactly
like what I used to hear in the pre-chloroform days when
patients were undergoing operations. After a while I
went with Stanhope * to a gallery overlooking a court
yard, and there I saw a man tied up to a wooden frame-
and undergoing the punishment of flogging. He was
slowly and severely beaten by hazel-rods steeped in
water. Presently he was taken down, after having
received about twenty-five strokes, the clothes not being
removed. After a while, to my horror and disgust, a-
rather pretty young woman is tied up, and undergoes the
same punishment. She was probably a prostitute,
possibly a thief, but the exhibition was horrible and.
* The Hon. Philip Stanhope accompanied Sandwith as agent of the-
Loiidon financiers.

THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR. 219
degrading. A number of the undergraduates from the
university opposite were looking on, jeering and
laughing. " I was determined to do what I could to abolish
this form of atrocity, and spoke of it to sundry Ministers
and men of note in the country, urging them to get rid
of it, as such things justly exposed a young country to
the reproach of barbarism. I was eloquent in this
matter, and in the course of a few months I had the
satisfaction to hear of the abolition of corporal punish
ment by the very next Skuptschina, or National
Assembly." Before returning home he determined, in the in
terests of the new railway, to make a journey across
country to Constantinople, and this tedious but not
uninteresting feat was in due time accomplished without
disaster, the knowledge that he obtained of the state of
the country proving to be of great service to him in
the political agitation on which he embarked when
the long-threatened quarrel between the Porte and the
Christian populations had broken out into war.
We need not. dwell on the further events of this and
the following years ; for events, as far as Sand-with was
concerned, there were none. He continued to live a
happy family life, sometimes at Wimbledon, sometimes
in France, keeping up his relations with the East and
with politicians at home, writing a novel full of
reminiscences of his youth at Beverley,* and amusing
* " Minsterborough ; A Tale of English Life." Three Vols. London :
1871.

220 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
himself by filling the Wimbledon house -with trophies
of Eastern travel and of rambles in pursuit of curious
old oak among the -villages of Brittany.
At last, when he was temporarUy settled with his
family in Tours, in the year 1876, the news of the
Bulgarian massacres arrived. " I had foretold them,"
says Sandwith, " in 1864, when writing from Rustchuk,
and describing the planting of Circassian colonies in
that devoted country. Then my friend Christitch wrote
to me to say that the Servians had armed and were
arming. The papers had already sent reporters to
Belgrade, who described the army as mobilised. I
could stand it no longer. I packed up my trunk, and,
taking a loving farewell of my dear wife, I once more
found myself en route towards Vienna."

CHAPTER XIV.
THE SERVIAN WAR.
Sandwith arrived in Belgrade on the 2nd of August,
and at once began to prepare himself for the active
mission of mercy which was to employ him until the
following December. Philip Christitch met him at the
landing-place, much depressed with the news of a recent
Servian defeat. He, indeed, and his friends of the
moderate party, had never wished for war, but had
maintained that the wiser policy for Servia was to play

THE SERVIAN WAR. 221
a waiting game, and to allow the two great powers,
Russia and Turkey, to fight out the inevitable quarrel
elsewhere than in the Principality. Absolute power,
however, was now in the hands of Ristics, and he was
acting under the impulsion of M. Aksakoff and the Slav
party in Russia, who were determined to bring matters
to an issue by thrusting Servia forward. Even granting
that the declaration of war was defensible, there can be
no doubt that, from the Servian point of view, it was a
mistake to abandon the strategical plan which had been
entertained when the alliance with Montenegro was
formed. That plan was to carry the war into the
mountains of Bosnia, Servia and Montenegro both
supplying forces to co-operate with the Bosnian insur
gents. It was thought, and with good reason, that it
would have been to the advantage of the Servian troops
to contend with their Turkish adversaries in a difficult
and mountainous country rather than in the lowlands of
Bulgaria and in the Morava valley, while to have stood
strictly on the defensive in the frontier fortresses would
not have overtaxed their powers. But this plan, as is
well known, was overruled, and General Tchernaieff
and the Russian officers who were the moving springs
of the war determined to take the offensive on the
Servian frontier itself.
Belgrade, when Sand-with arrived, was in a condition
which recalled vividly to him the state of Con
stantinople three-and-twenty years before. " In the
cafes," he writes, " there were newspaper correspondents
in swarms ; there were inventors of new-fangled instru-

222 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
ments of slaughter ; contractors for arms from America ;
a few political sympathisers like myself; army pur
veyors ; a number of young foreign surgeons, besides
here and there an adventurous tourist. Among the
soldiers of fortune whom I met I have a vivid recoUec-
tion of two — Captain Wilhelm von Herzberg, well
known in Austria, and a certain Colonel Mclver. He
was a powerful, hard-looking man, who had seen war
for the first time, as he said, in the Indian Mutiny.
He had fought for slavery in the Southern States of
America, for liberty in Crete, for legitimacy under Don
Carlos in Spain, and now he wanted to fight again for
Hberty in Servia. He was set to work to organise a
cavalry force." This colonel, or as he is now called
Brigadier-General Mclver, has since become very
generally known as a remarkable type of his class.
The first business with which Sandwith was en
trusted was to go to Widdin with credentials from the
Servian Government, with the object of extorting from the
Turkish Pasha a pledge to treat the wounded in a humane
and civilised fashion. The especial reason for this mission
was the arrival of news from the front to the effect that
the Servian forces had been defeated with a loss of five
hundred wounded — news accompanied by the statement
that the Turks were giving no quarter. " We steamed
down the Danube," Sandwith -writes, "and when we
passed the Servian frontier the scene was distressing,
but most picturesque. All the Turkish shore was lined
with fugitives and families of peasants with their flocks
and herds. Some were busily engaged in swimming

THE SERVIAN WAR. 223
their cattle across the river, having passed a rope over
the horns of a cow or an ox, and then towing it behind
a boat, while others were camped round large flres.
There was evidently a panic terror throughout the
multitude, and with very good reason, for rumours, only
too well-founded, kept arriving that paled the cheeks of
the bravest. The Turks were evidently at their old
work once more — their work of rapine, arson, and
murder." He found, as might be expected, very con
siderable difficulties with the Pasha. He represented to
him the effect which these proceedings of the Turks
were having and would have upon public opinion in
England, and after tedious negotiations, lasting some
days, he succeeded in extracting from him promises that
were not deemed unsatisfactory.
On his return to Belgrade a far more important
mission was proposed to him. The Servians were
suffering continual defeats, and party warfare and
diplomatic intrigue were running high in the capital.
The Russian Consul-General, the Archbishop, and
Tchernaieff, the Commander-in-Chief , were for continuing
the war at all costs, with the scarcely concealed object
of extending it so as to bring Russia into it, and these
persons had the ear of the Prince and of the Prime
Minister. On the other hand, Mr. White, the English
Consul-General, acting of course on instructions from
the Government at home, was most anxious that the
war should come to an end. Finally, his influence, aided
by that of the incessant defeats of the Servian forces,
prevailed so far as to lead Ristics to determine to sue for

224 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
peace. " At this moment," Sandwith -writes, " I was
sent for by the Prime Minister, and sounded as to
whether I would undertake a secret mission to
Constantinople, not to treat definitely on the terms for
peace, but to treat for the preliminaries. I was to go
with certain credentials, and to hint at an alliance with
the Turks against Austria or Russia, provided Bosnia
and Herzegovina were delivered over to the Government
of the Serbs ; in other words, the Serbs were prepared
to assist in combining together under the Sultan, and
form a defensive zone of independent communities under
the Prince of Servia. The question as to what was to
become of the Montenegrin alliance was not settled.
I was requested to hold myself in readiness to go to
Constantinople, but before starting I was to receive
detailed instructions from the Prime Minister and the
Prince. The British Agent was most eager for my
mission, and Christitch prepared for me a telegraphic
cipher wdth which I might communicate with him
during my stay in the Turkish capital. I was kept in
suspense for two or three days, but during this time
the Prince consulted the Russian Consul-General, who
violently opposed my mission. In the first place, he did
not wish the war to stop, but on the contrary desired to
bring Russia into it ; and in the second place, he justly
dreaded an Englishman having charge of such a mission.
So, having made every preparation, even to the packing
of my trunk, I was told that the mission was to be
abandoned.'' It is needless to speculate on the results that

THE SERVIAN WAR. 225
might have followed from this mission, had it ever
taken place. It came to nothing, peace was indefinitely
deferred, and Sandwith soon began to see what could be
done towards alleviating the sufferings of the wounded.
Towards the end of August, he, with Colonel Mure and two
other Englishmen, visited the army of the Drina, and, as
might be expected, they found the hospital arrangements
very imperfect indeed. The chief medical officer was a
drunkard, and the foreigners whose services had been
accepted were, with the exception of a number of ex-
students of St. Thomas's Hospital, very ineffective.
Unfortunately, too, not aU the English volunteer
surgeons were satisfactory or even qualified men. One
story in connection with them may be quoted — we have
aUuded to it already — as an iUustration both of the
surgery of the campaign and also of Sandwith's here
ditary dislike for useless operations. " We entered one
of the hospitals, and were introduced to the English
doctor, a little man of about forty, who was very fussy,
and talked very learnedly, using hard words. He said
he was going to perform a very important operation on
the following day — namely, the amputation of a hand.
I asked to see the patient, and then the hand. A ball
had passed through the palm ; the wound was perfectly
healthy, so was the patient. I turned savagely on the
surgeon, and asked him how he dared to propose the
mutilation of the poor man for such an insufficient
cause. The doctor was astonished and indignant, and
asked me who I was. I told him I was an ex-inspector
of hospitals. ' Have you any authority here, sir ? ' he

226 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
asked. 'None whatever, but I have influence enough
to have you removed from here, and I shall use it to that
effect.' The doctor then became very humble, and
promised not to cut off the hand ; but I went to the
telegraph office, and sent a despatch to the Minister
of War, advising him to remove Dr.  . The doctor
was removed. I ascertained that he was an old student
of the Middlesex Hospital, and had no diploma of any
kind." They inspected the Servian army, being very kindly
received by General Alimpitch, afterwards one of
those who most warmly welcomed Sandwith's efforts
in aid of the Servian wounded. After their inspection
of the army, which was then in a state of quiescence,
active operations being conflned to Tchernaieff's forces
at Alexinatz, they pushed southwards in light country
carts. " At Leshnitza we called upon a rich merchant,
who received us hospitably. He boasted of his know
ledge of English literature, which began and ended
with his having read the ' Hekim Bashy ' in the
Ser-vian translation. He was much pleased when I
introduced myself as the author of that book, so little
appreciated in England."
Returning to Belgrade, they found the city fuU of
dismal rumours about ill-success at 'Alexinatz. Sandwith
and Colonel Mure determined to push to the front, to see
the truth for themselves. They were almost stopped at
the outset by an English newspaper correspondent, who
represented himself as having just returned at headlong
speed from the front, and having seen Tchernaieff's

THE SERVIAN WAR. 227
army in fuU rout. The news was, however, premature,
though it was believed all over the country. In due
time they arrived at Tchernaieff's headquarters, and
found him acting strictly on the defensive, the severe
fighting of the previous days having had various success,
but having resulted in no general defeat. The whole
country was in a fearful condition, the horizon being
every night Ut up with blazing villages, Circassians and
Bashi-Bazouks prowling in all directions, and too well-
authenticated stories of Turkish cruelty coming in from
every quarter. It is not necessary now to tell over
again those stories which created so much effect in
England when Sandwith and other witnesses on the spot
recorded them in the journals of the time. The
immediate effect of Sandwith's visit to Alexinatz was
his appeal to the people of England for help for the
wounded and the refugees. Enthusiastically seconded
by Mr. E. A. Freeman, the historian, and by other
friends in England, he succeeded in raising large sums
of money from English charity ; and he at once set to
work to distribute relief wherever it was most needed.
Before we proceed to give details of this mission, it may
be well to add one word with regard to the conflicting
stories of atrocities on either side, which were so freely
circulated at the time in the English papers. As every
one knows, Belgrade is situated at the junction of the Save
and the Danube, and opposite is the Hungarian town of
Semlin. Now Semlin hates Belgrade with the hatred of
neighbours and enemies — una amne discretis connesmm
odium — and whatever stories ingenuity can collect or

228 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
invent against the Servian character are to be picked up
there in abundance. Unfortunately it had become a habit
among the English newspaper correspondents, with
almost the single exception of Mr. Archibald Forbes,
to frequent Semlin rather than Belgrade, so that by
far the greater part of the gossip that was sent to
England was clouded with Hungarian prejudice.
The first visit to the Drina and the Morava had
been more or less a -visit of inquiry. The later visits
were undertaken with the practical object of relieving
the refugees.
" I was much interested," he writes, in his descrip
tion of his second visit to the camp of Alimpitch, " in
hearing of the enormous sacrifices made by the people
on behalf of the national cause. One peasant gave
voluntarily 5,000 ducats (about £2,500), and said there
would be more forthcoming if necessary. The family
where I lodged told me they had buried all their
treasure at a certain spot in the mountains, and another
had hidden his in his salt magazine.
" At Belgrade I made the acquaintance of the
Archimandrite Duchich, a brave warrior as well as an
ecclesiastic. This priest was physically a splendid
feUow, more than six feet high. He lived in Herze
govina, and when the insurrection broke out he joined
the insurgents. The Turks set a price on his head, and
burned down his monastery. They failed to catch him;
but they caught his mother, and baked her to death in
an oven. Duchich was now laid up with a ball in his
leg, and I made him and Philip Christitch my committee.

THE SERVIAN WAR. 229
He had been fighting hard in Bosnia, and he showed
me a revolver with which he had killed seven Turks.
On one hot day he slew a Moslem on a fine horse ;
then, jumping off" his own horse, he mounted the Turk's,
and rode off. Feeling what he thought was a water
melon in the saddle-bag, he drew it out, and, lo, it was
a freshly-severed Christian head!
"The Prince of Ser-via showed quite a ferocious
antipathy to the English. On one occasion the munici
pality of Belgrade -wished to send a telegram to Freeman,
thanking him for his literary services to the cause,
when the Prince interfered, and stopped the telegram,
on the ground that Freeman was an Englishman. . . .
The Prince himself never went within the sound of
artillery, and showed an utter want of sympathy and
feeling for his brave soldiers. On one occasion, seeing
a newly-raised squadron -with new saddles and bridles,
he took the harness for his own body guard."
Sandwith determined to direct his attention rather
to the refugees than to the wounded; for while the
hospitals were sufficiently manned, if not served in the
best manner, he well knew that in the neighbourhood
of the frontier, and far away from the chief centres of
population, crowds of miserable peasants were gathered
together, having fled from their burnt villages. Accord
ingly, in the company of his devoted young lieutenant —
Mr. W. H. Gordon, an EngUsh officer who had volun
teered to help in the work of relief — he pushed south
wards to Uziza, which was reported to be the most
necessitous commune, and to have given shelter to a

230 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
large number of refugees, chiefly Bosnian and Herze-
govinian. By the beginning of November he had
received nearly £3,500 from charitable friends at home.
Among these poor creatures, whose stories, as he says,
were marked by a horrible sameness, he distributed
such relief as was possible — sheepskin cloaks and
waistcoats, wadded cotten coats for children, suits of
coarse thick cloth for the men, and warm stuffed
petticoats, while with the money that he took with
him he bought wood and corn, and such little things as
might be wanted for the necessities of the day.- " One
Government warehouse was assigned me," he writes, in
his account of the days spent at Uziza, " and I spent an
hour or two among these refugees just as a beginning.
There was, of course, considerable pressure, but no rude
hustling, quarrelling, or scrambling. I always showed a
preference for mothers ,of families, and the ragged men
stood back patiently until these were served. Some of
the poor women waUed as they told their griefs. Most
of them passionately kissed my hand, and all of them
invoked blessings on the English. ' What am I to do
with my five children — five children, O Englishman ?
What am I to do without my husband, killed by those
cruel Turks ? Alas, alas !/ " This was the staple of
the cries that met his ears.
In the intervals of his work among the refugees, he
found time to write frequent letters to the English
papers, especiaUy to the Times and the Daily News,
giving accounts of his employment there, and also
taking every opportunity of pleading the cause of the

THE SERVIAN WAR. 231
Serb populations. Towards the end of the year, as
many of our readers will remember, political events
entered upon a new phase. The Servians were severely
defeated at Alexinatz ; the town was taken, and every
one at Belgrade expected a devastating advance of the
Turkish army down the valley of the Morava. What
horrors would then have ensued a very slight acquain
tance with history enables us to imagine, and these
horrors were -within an ace of their accomplishment.
At that moment the Russian Ambassador at Constanti
nople delivered an ultimatum to the Porte demanding
an armistice, which was of course granted. Then
followed the abortive Conference of Constantinople, at
which England was represented by Lord Salisbury, and
the proclamation of the new Turkish Constitution by
Midhat Pasha. Those acquainted with the ways of
Eastern politics were not at all surprised when very
soon after this Midhat was suddenly dismissed from
power and temporarily banished ; no more, in fact, than
they were surprised two years ago by the account of
his trial for the murder of Abdul Aziz ; or the other day,
when the news came of his sudden death and that of
his partner in exUe.
In January, 1877, his funds being exhausted, Sand
with returned home, and began a course of lectures and
speeches in various parts of the country in aid of the
cause he had at heart. He lectured in London at the
Working Men's College, in Liverpool, in Oxford, at
various places in Scotland, and again in London at
Grosvenor House, where the Duke of Westminster took

232 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
the chair, and speeches were made by Mr. Gladstone,
the Duke of Argyll, and the Bishop of Durham. On
the 7th March he started again for the East, taking
with him about £7,000, a large portion of it having
been contributed by one Lancashire gentleman, under
the strict condition that his name should not be made
public. The weather was cold and bad. Sandwith was
already out of health, and if his help was to be of any
service, it would be necessary for him to travel in
semi-barbarous regions under conditions of great diffi
culty. Most fortunate was it that at this juncture
he obtained the assistance of a friend, who turned out
to be invaluable to him. This was Mr. Augustus
Baker, a gentleman who, having been at one period
a medical student, and being at the time at leisure,
had found his way to Servia, with an idea of helping
in the relief of the wounded.* Sandwith had met him
a few months before at Uziza, where the two had
fraternised completely, and accordingly it was with
mutual satisfaction that they arranged to travel through
the country together. They determined to go to
Zaitchar, a small town that had been completely ruined
by the war.
" On Saturday, March 24th, I started for Zaitchar in
a little open cart with Baker, young Milan Christitch
* Mr. Baker was, after the war, appointed H.M. Consul at Nisch, on
the Servian frontier ; thence he was transferred, nominally, to Khartoum.
Before he could reach that city, however, it was surrounded by the forces of
the Mahdi, and Mr. Baker is at this moment Acting Consul at Suakim
(May, 1884).

THE SERVIAN WAR. 233
following in another cart with our luggage. The
weather had been for some days so mild that I had
foolishly left behind me my sheepskin cloak. Our route
was a very long one, through the most dismal scenes.
We scarcely met a human being, but the villages were
not unfrequent, or rather the remains of them, for they
were nothing now but blackened ruins. On all sides
was desolation in every form. Towards dark I felt
excessively cold and decidedly unwell. Presently Baker,
seeing me look blue and ill, gallantly took off his own
fur cloak and lent it to me, which I reluctantly received,
and then fell down in the bottom of the car in a state of
coUapse. " We arrived at Zaitchar when it was quite dark,
and I was conveyed into the room of one of the officials,
a very dilapidated and dirty place, but it was one of the
A-eiw few rooms which had a roof and a window left to
it, and here I was laid on a bed in a very prolonged and
intense cold fit of fever. With all his skiU, Baker had the
greatest difficulty in procuring a little hot water for my
feet, but it was obtained at last. For some hours I lay
between life and death. Baker declares that he expected
to see me expire at any hour for want of reaction. At
last the hot fit came with a vengeance, and I lay in a
burning fever for about three days. I thought that I
was about to die, and, feeling that I was in full possession
of my faculties, I made every disposition for my death.
I left my gold watch to Baker, and begged that he would
have me laid quietly and without fuss on the slope of the
nearest mountain. All night long I was in a state

234 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
of burning, sleepless misery. My early recollections of
the East were brought vividly back to my mind, and
I remembered how, nearly thirty years before, I had
often lain for days in outlandish places sick of fever. I
made calculations, and wondered how long my constitu
tion would resist. When should I die ? It was Sunday.
I thought I might last till Thursdajj- or Friday. How
would my wife hear of my illness ? Doubtless it would
be telegraphed and appear in the latest intelligence
in the Times, which she read every morning, and I
seemed to read the announcement, 'Br. Sandioith died at
Zaitchar, of fever, on the 2Wi inst! How would that
affect her when she read it in the morning paper ? The
children would find her frozen with horror and grief,
and, on their learning the cause, what a day of agony it
would be ! Well, the worst would be got over, the weeks
and the months would soften the blow, and their father
might have died in a worse cause.
" About three days passed in intense suffering, and
then I slept — a sleep that was inexpressibly sweet.
I awoke without fever. I was intensely weak, but
happy. Fortunately, Baker had discovered a cow, the
only one within miles, and he secured the milk thereof,
-with which he fed me. After a whUe he brought
me some lamb, roasted, and some good Negotin wine, I
had for a year or two been a teetotaller, and almost
a vegetarian ; but I now had a perfect cra-ving for wine
and meat, and this roast lamb and Negotin wine seemed
to me perfectly delicious.
"We had about £300 with us in gold, a somewhat

THE SERVIAN WAR. 235
dangerous burden amongst a barbarous and impo
verished population. Now that I was convalescent.
Baker ventured to leave me for three or four hours
at a time, when he placed the money near me, and a
loaded revolver under my bedclothes.
" While I had felt that I was about to die, I would
on no account allow Baker to telegraph to my family ;
but now I thought I should like my -wife to come out
to me. I did not like the idea of her coming out
alone, so I telegraphed to my dear friend Admiral
Maxse, to see if he could arrange that H  should
act as her escort. He, thinking that she knew of my
illness, telegraphed to her at Tours. His message
was : — ' H  cannot come ; shaU I send you a
courier?' Lucy received this one Sunday morning-
while she was caUing on a neighbour. She at once
read the puzzle, hurried home, sent the governess to
get some money from the bank, packed up a few things,
got off by the next train, and that night left Paris for
Vienna. Meanwhile other influences had been set in
motion ; the Consul-General at Belgrade, being in
structed by the Foreign Office, which had been moved
by Maxse, sent a young English doctor — Dr. Hume —
to my assistance, and he met my wife at Bazias. There,
fortunately, she received a telegram from me, saying
that I was better. The Minister of War sent me an
ambulance carriage, and on Sunday, April 8th, I was
placed in this, and began my journey homewards in
perfect comfort. At Negotin the proto-papa, or chief
priest, received me in his own house. I had just got

236 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
comfortably installed, when I heard under my window
loud sounds of gaUoping pandours and the rattling of
carriage wheels. They stopped at my door. A parley
ensues ; I hear a sweet voice saying, ' No, no ; I won't
rest here ; I must go on to-night.' ' Imme Gospodin !'
' Der Herr ist hier I' is the answer from sundry mouths,
speaking Serb or German. In another moment they
are admitted, and we are in one another's arms."
With little difficulty Sandwith was brought to Bel
grade, and thence to his house at Tours, terribly shaken,
of course, but still convalescent.

CHAPTER XV.
BUCHAREST.
The -winter of 1876-7 was a time of anxiety, of pour
parlers, of diplomatic activity, centred first in the
Conference of Constantinople, and afterwards in the
mission of General Ignatieff to the West. The Con
ference, as we all remember, was a failure ; Lord
Salisbury, who had been the chief English plenipo
tentiary, frankly accusing the Turks of "infatuation
in refusing the proposals of the Powers." The last
sitting took place on January 20th. Early in February
Midhat Pasha, the reforming Grand Vizier and author
of the new Turkish Constitution, was 'Summarily dis
missed and exiled, and Edhem Pasha, a Turk of an

BUCHAREST. 237
older school, took his place. On March 19 the farcical
Turkish " Parliament " was assembled, and the Sultan
made a speech, declaring that all would now go well,
that all his subjects would be for the future equal and
happy, and that foreign Powers would lose their last
excuse for interfering with his empire. Less than a
fortnight after, on March 31, the six great Powers,
assembled in London, drew up a protocol "in-viting"
the Porte to rectify the frontiers of Montenegro, to re
duce its armies to a peace footing, and to carry out
thorough reforms with regard to the Christian popula
tions. The Porte answered by an indignant Note,
treating the protocol as " destitute of all equity, and,
consequently, of all obUgatory character." This was
early in April ; and but a few days were to elapse
before the answer of Russia should be known. On
April 24 the Czar issued a manifesto declaring war.
His armies entered Roumania and Armenia on the
same day, and the two campaigns were opened. Active
operations were very soon in progress in Asia Minor.
The Danube was not crossed till two months later, the
first passage being effected almost without loss on June
21st. By the end of that month some 200,000 Russians
were in Bulgaria, and the European campaign began in
earnest. Meantime, Sandwith rested and recovered, passing
the greater part of the spring at Tours. The summer
he spent most pleasantly with his family at a little
watering-place called Asnelles, on the coast of the
Department of Calvados, some ten mUes from the

238 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
picturesque city of Bayeux. They had rented a
charming old house, half farm, half chateau, with a
large rambling garden, a short mile from the sea. In
a cottage hard by, the writer of these pages was also
settled, and a family of friends were occupying a house
by the shore. There, in a village which seemed as
though it had never known a foreign visitor, this happy
group of English holiday-makers spent six delightful
weeks, bathing and basking on the sands, rambling
along the shore towards Arromanches, the " Village on
the Cliff," and exploring the old castles and churches of
the neighbourhood.
Echoes of the great events that were passing else
where naturally found their way even to Asnelles, and
our daily papers told us how the Russian army was still
stopped in its advance by Plevna and Osman Pasha ;
while both from the papers and from the timorous
gossip of the neighbours we learned how the Govern
ment of the Seize Mai was preparing for the great
general election which was shortly to decide whether
France was to continue a Republic or no. There was,
in fact, plenty of stirring news to supply matter of
conversation for all of us.
In the fine air and the healthy surroundings of the
Norman village Sandwith completed his recovery, and
by the middle of August he seemed, at least to the
unprofessional eye, in perfect health. Then came the
end of the holiday, and he returned with his wife and
children to Tours. "We took up our residence once
more," he writes, " in the beautiful house on the hill,

BUCHAREST. 239
called Beau Sdjour, and I somewhat grumblingly
resigned myself to a dull winter. Tours had absolutely
no attractions for me, and being away from my library
and from my club I was even as a fish out of water.
One afternoon about the end of September, our dulness
was broken in upon by a stirring telegram from
Auberon Herbert, which was much as follows :— ' WiU
you go as the delegate of the Russian Sick and
Wounded Association to the seat of war? All ex
penses paid.' This was indeed startling. I felt that
it might be to me a sentence of death, as, although
apparently quite well again, I certainly was not strong.
On the other hand I longed to be off" once more amongst
those stirring scenes, and I dreaded the dull winter in
Tours." In a very short time Sandwith had made up
his mind to go. He hastened to London, attended
meetings of the Executive Committee in Lord Bath's
house, and finally left London on October 18th, with
five young surgeons. They pushed on to Vienna, and
thence to Bucharest, " The first indication," he writes,
"that we were nearing the seat of war was the smell
of carbolic acid arising from some wooden field hospitals
erected near the railway station, a smeU very familiar
and very odious to me. Ah, how I had learned to hate
war !
When Sandwith arrived at Bucharest, he found the
prospects of Russia and the spirit of the army, which
had been overcast by the repulses before Plevna and the
events of the Shipka Pass, lightened by the news of the
great -victory just gained over Mukhtar Pasha near Kars,

240 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
in the battle known as that of the Acolias hill or the
Aladj a Dagh. General Todleben, the famous engineer, had
been summoned to Plevna, which was to be reduced by
the slow and certain method of a regular siege. On the
river Lom, the armies of the Czarewitch and of Suleiman
Pasha were watching each other ; while on the Vid a
series of fierce battles was at this moment proceeding, the
advantages remaining with the Russians, who thus
succeeded in closing the western approach to Plevna.
In a word, it was the most critical period of the war.
The wounded numbered thousands, and, as might have
been expected, the means of taking care of them were
very deficient.
The question for Sandwith was how he could best
assign the help which he had brought from London.
Aided by his friend Dimitri Ghika, he succeeded, after
some discussion, in placing the five doctors in a hospital
on the Danube ; though he soon saw it had been a
mistake to bring them, the Russians being — as was only
natural — intensely jealous of the English.
" I presently find the headquarters of the Russian
Red Cross Society, where I have to call more than once
before I can find the chief. At last I see him, and he
gives me rather a cool reception. He seems to be
rather worried, and evidently regards me as another
applicant for some sort of post. However, I begin by
telling him that I am the delegate for a society of
Enghsh sympathisers, and that I have a small sum of
money, at present only a small sum, to offer toward the
work of the Russian Red Cross. He at once changes

BUCHAREST. 241
his manner, and becomes more polite. I then tell him
that I am ashamed to mention the sum, but at present
it is only one thousand pounds. ' Comment, Monsieur,
vingt-cinq mille francs ! mais c'est magnifique ! ' I
thank him for his appreciation of the offering, but I assure
him that much more will be forthcoming by-and-by. .
. . . I finally, after consulting with other author
ities, agree that the best thing will be to build a
wooden etappen, or resting-place, instead of the tents
that are now used for that purpose. I learned that
about 70,000 carts were daily going to and returning
from the Russian army. These conveyed provisions, and
brought back the sick and wounded, who, after each
long day's journey, rested at particular stations under
the care of the Red Cross Society. Up to the present
time these resting-places had been tents, which were
obviously insufficient on the approach of winter.
" I went with Mr. Bagavout (the Chief of the Red
Cross) to Frateshti, and thence to Putinie, where was
one of the resting-places of the sick and wounded. In
place of the tents, they had here begun to erect a large
wooden barrack, and this was handed over to me to
complete and furnish so that it would contain a thousand
men at a pinch. This place was built and furnished
with stoves, beds, &c., for about £1,000.
"November 12th. — I had a very interesting conversa
tion -with Prince Gortschakoff. He was then an old man
of about eighty-two, and decidedly feeble in body, though
apparently as acute as ever in mind. He tells me that
I am to go into Bulgaria and see the Emperor."
Q

¦242 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
Partly with the view of carrying out Prince Gorts-
chakoff's wishes, and still more with the idea of being
of service at headquarters, Sandwith soon started for
Plevna. On this occasion, however, he did not carry
out his intention. The roads were almost impassable,
and the transport was difficult and very costly. Arriving
at the -wretched little town of Sistova, where the streets
were more than ankle-deep in mud, he revised his plans,
and came to the conclusion that he could be of more
service in Bucharest, where letters were awaiting him,
and whence he could direct the building operations of
his new hospital. To show that travelling in this part
of the country was not a laughing matter, it may be
remarked that on reaching the railway it was necessary
to start before daylight, as a Turkish battery was -within
range, and the artillerymen made a point of shelling
every train that they could see. Fortunately, however,
he reached Bucharest without adventures, after seeing
that the building of his hospital at Putinie was getting
on rapidly. " December 8th. — I had an interview with the famous
General Ignatieff. He told me that during the Con
ference at Constantinople, where England was repre
sented by Lord Salisbury, the Turks always boasted
that they had Sir Henry EUiot and Beaconsfield as
their supporters, and they were sure that England
would sooner or later come to their assistance. He
adds that Russia would even now make peace, though
Ple-vna was still unreduced, if she could only have
formal guarantees for the safety of the Christians ; but

BUCHAREST. 243
that Beaconsfield and Layard, then Ambassador at
Constantinople, are urging the Turks to resist, declaring
that when once the Russians reach Adrianople England
wUl intervene. The General also tells me that he was
always accused of having agents and spies aU over
Turkey. ' That was quite true,' he said. ' I had
thousands of them, but they cost me nothing ; every
¦wronged Christian was a voluntary agent of mine.'
"December 10th. — I had just turned early into bed
when Prince Jon Ghika came into my room and told
me that the city was suddenly being illuminated, as
Plevna was taken. Osman Pasha had made an attempt
to break through the lines, and had been obliged to
surrender at discretion. I hastily dress and go out.
Every house is illuminated, and bands of music are
parading the town.
"December llth. — I call on Gortschakoff and Baron
Frederick to congratulate them on the -victory, and I
attend the Te Deum in the Cathedral. Osman Pasha is
considered a great hero ; I think him a great ruffian.
He blundered into position at Ple-vna, and there en
trenched himself, and when his troops had repulsed the
Russian assault and thrown them into confusion, he
stupidly failed to foUow up his advantages. Had he
done so, the Russians would have been driven into the
Danube, for a panic prevailed after the first repulse ; but
Osman aUowed the enemy to recover himself, and
gradually to bring up reinforcements in sufficient
number to hem in the Turkish forces. The Russians
so entrenched themselves, where necessary, that the

244 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
position of the Turks .was hopeless long before they
capitulated. Meantime, Osman refused flags of truce,
or to entertain any measure for mitigating the horrors
of the war. After each assault the Russian wounded
on the glacis were left to perish slowly of hunger, thirst,
and fever. Osman behaved as a sulky savage, and
treated his own wounded brutally.
"December VI th. — The Emperor arrives, and about
this time the winter sets in with a terrific snowstorm.
Bucharest presents an extraordinary appearance. The
streets are soon deep in snow, but the cold is so intense
and the traffic so great that it was soon hard. In a
single night all the hackney carriages are transformed
into sledges, and the streets become lively -with the
tinkling of the bells.
"December 21th. — ^The Prince arrived to-day, in the
midst of great rejoicings ; and I bought a horse for
Baker, who had joined me, and we prepared for another
journey to the Danube.
"January 1st, 1878. — I found myself once more on
the road towards Putinie. The weather was intensely
cold, and the train moved very slowly indeed. Young
ViUiers, the artist of the Graphic, was with me.
" At Frateshti we were most hospitably received by
M. BranzoU, an exceedingly gentlemanly Russian, who
spoke English admirably. He, poor feUow, was unwell,
but did not know that he had got the typhus fever,
which afterwards nearly finished him. We all slept
together in a hut that night. The ice on the Danube
had prevented all movement, and the supplies to the

BUCHAREST. 245
army were very irregular. The encampment at
Frateshti presented a strange appearance ; icicles every
where, sentinels muffled up in sheepskin, difficulty of
obtaining water, every means used to obtain a little
warmth. Gourko's soldiers had to sleep in the open
air. Of three thousand Turkish prisoners marching
from Plevna, one thousand perished in the snow in one
night. " ViUiers and I engaged a peasant's sledge, made of
rude planks and hedge-stakes in the roughest manner.
We paid at the rate of about a napoleon a mile, and
started early in the morning. After an hour's journey,
I observed a black mass moving in the distance, and
contrasting with the snovvy expanse around us. 'Do
you see that ? ' I asked of my companion. He could
not make it out. ' We must get to windward,' I
remarked, 'for that is evidently a batch of Turkish
prisoners meeting us; they are coming from Plevna,
and they wUl smell most horribly.' In about fifteen
minutes we met them. They were some two or three
thousand, in a column, guarded by Roumanian soldiers,
who pushed them on very brutally. A large flight of
crows foUowed them, and alighted near any prisoner
who dropped. The stench was horrible, for we got a
whiff at times if by any accident we got to leeward of
the prisoners.
" They were very poorly clothed, too, considering
the weather, and were all foully dirty. The aspect of
the poor wretches was pitiable in the extreme ; their
features were haggard, their gait limping, and from

246 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
time to time one would fall out and beg leave to die.
In such a case he always had a loving comrade to cheer
and encourage him, but both were kicked and punched
by the guards. I flew at one of these in a rage, but I
fear no one was any the better for my interference.
Many of the prisoners, however, indeed most of them,
seemed in good condition, and the officers usuaUy had a
pony, and a servant also mounted with their baggage.
There were some carts following the convoys, in which
some of the sick were placed, but the carts were by
many too few.
" Immediately after passing the convoy of prisoners
we came on the naked body of a Turk, half -covered by
the snow. Villiers jumped out and sketched the dismal
scene for the Graphic. We found several more during
our drive.
" On arriving at Putinie I found the village fuU
of distressing sights. Just outside dogs and hawks were
quarrelling over the bodies of the Russians, whUe inside
crowds of prisoners were arriving in a deplorable
condition, and were being quartered on the cottagers.
The huts were very small, barely sufficient to hold a
family, and the peasants were horrified on ha-ving forced
upon them a number of sickly prisoners in a state
of indescribable filth, and too often suffering from
infectious disorders. The women especially were loud in
their protests, which boded ill for the wretched captives,
many of whom during the night were thrust out into
the bitter cold to die.
" I went about the village to do what I could.

BUCHAREST. 247
What scenes of horror met my eyes ! I entered,
with Villiers, a small hut of two rooms, dismantled,
with no doors or windows. Looking in, I saw on the
right about a dozen Turkish soldiers. All but four had
thrown themselves exhausted on the floor, and were
lying in all postures, apparently in a deep sleep ; others
were crouching round a small fire of sticks which they
had kindled in the middle of the room, and were trying
to thaw their frozen limbs ; another poor wretch,
-without trousers, was crouching outside these. Unluckily
for him he had, or was supposed to have had, some
money, and so the Roumanian guards had robbed him,
and after doing so had torn his trousers to pieces. His
comrades would not allow him to approach the fire, but
pushed him away, just as a sick animal is pushed away
by its companions. I interfered, and got him a place by
the fire, and then examined the other men. They were
all far gone in typhus. Their tongues were black and
dry. They said they had not tasted food for three days,
probably an exaggeration, but how are such men to
keep account of time ? I turned from these to examine
those lying down around the room. They were all dead.
I hurried out to try and find some food for the survivors.
AU I could procure was some bread and onions, and these
the poor typhus- stricken wretches could not touch. I went
into the other room, where there were still more Turks,
but they were all dead. I shall never forget the look of
one poor youth, a beardless boy and an officer, whose
aspect, even in death, was most touching. He had
evidently been driven to death, and had at last sunk.

248 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
after awful sufferings, and died in this indescribable
den. "All that afternoon and evening more prisoners
kept coming in. The large building I had erected was
crowded, tents were crowded, cottages were crowded,
amidst the curses and lamentations of the peasantry.
Night set in, a dark, moonless night, and the glimmer
of the lanterns just sufficed to throw fltful flashes upon
this heap of disorder and misery.
" After a sleepless night I felt so imwell that I de
termined to return to Bucharest. I start very early in
the morning, in the midst of a snowstorm, and make my
way through deep snow over roads that are rapidly be
coming obliterated, until we come to a point where two
roads branch off. One, to Frateshti, has no telegraph
-wires, but it is the nearest, and, what is a decided
advantage, it is altogether out of the Turkish flre. The
other has telegraph wires aU the way to Giurgevo, and
therefore one cannot easily lose one's way ; but it leads
to within range of the big guns of Rustchuk, and the
Turks fire often. I pause for a moment ; but ever
since I was lost in a snowstorm on my return from
Kars, I have an overwhelming dread of snow. That
decides me, so I choose the chance of the Turkish guns.
We were not fired at, and I arrived safe at Giurgevo."
Here, too, Sandwith found nothing but misery, dirt,
cold, and discomfort ; and, anxious as he was to push
on to Bucharest, it was a matter of extreme difficulty,
for the railway engines were broken, and the floors of
the railway carriages were covered with frozen snow.

BUCHAREST. 249
""I waited in a carriage," writes Sandwith, "until I
«aw the station-master pass. I called to him, and asked
him when the train was to start. He told me it would
be some time during the night, but he did not know
when, and it would be all night on the road. He
strongly advises me not to attempt the night journey,
as I am weak from want of sleep and good food, and
from tension of nerves. I feel that it would be too
great a risk to undertake the night journey in such
intense cold, so I return to my filthy hotel. There I
passed another sleepless night, which demoralised me
¦exceedingly, and returned to the station a lit£le before
the hour announced for the departure of the train —
5.40 a.m. Some bread, coffee, and mUk — the most
¦delicious meal I ever tasted — put new life into me, and
after some hours, during which we were all the while
expecting a shell from Rustchuk, we started. It was a
miserable journey, but in time we arrived at Bucharest
to find that our baggage had all been left behind. After
four days I recovered it. I stayed a little longer at
Bucharest, and then, ha-ving done all I could, I left for
home, and meantime the Russians pursued their con
quering career up to the walls of Constantinople."
With regard to this last work of mercy in which
Sandwith was engaged, one or two remarks seem neces
sary. His operations were less widely successful than
they had been in Servia, for several reasons. In Servia
he had been encouraged by the authorities ; in Bulgaria
and Roumania he was mainly left to his own resources,
and that at the most difficult time of the year, when the

250 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
weather was terrible. Again, he never intended to do
much more than to hand his money over to the Russian
Red Cross Society, and to remain on the spot to see that
it was properly used ; and this, at least, he accomplished.
The Putinie hospital alone, which saved scores of lives and
aUe-dated the lot of hundreds of wounded men, was in itself
a sufficient justification of his mission. Lastly, it was
too plain from the moment of his arrival that he was
physically not himself. His system was shaken, almost
shattered, by the hardships of a lifetime and by the
frightful fever from which he had suffered but nine
months before. Had he considered himself alone he
would have remained quietly at home, attending to his
diet, taking regular sleep, and abstaining as much as
possible from all excitement. But his own health and
comfort were the last considerations -with him ; and when
the task of going to help the cause of humanity in the
cold and pestilential East was laid upon him, he accepted
it without a word.

CHAPTER XVI.
LAST YEARS.
Sandwith arrived at Tours in the middle of January ,^
with his health thoroughly undermined, and though
neither he nor those around him were fully conscious of
the amount of the mischief, he was no longer capable of
such extraordinary efforts as he had made during the
last two years. The early part of 1878 he di-vided

LAST YEARS. 231
between London and Tours. It may be imagined that
at that most critical time, when the question of peace or
of a war which would have strained the resources of the
Empire to the utmost was in the balance, and when the
best judges of public affairs knew not from day to day
to which side the scale might incline, his mind continued
to be deeply exercised on the relations between England
and the East. It is not necessary here to tell over again
the story of those momentous months. It is enough to
say that from the end of March (when the English fleet
entered the Dardanelles, and when as a consequence
Lord Derby resigned the post of Foreign Minister, to be
succeeded by Lord Salisbury) until the meeting of the
Berlin Congress in June, the peace of Europe was, as the
Greeks used to say, " on a razor's edge." During all this
time Sandwith acted as a sleepless critic of Lord
Beaconsfield's Government, and spared no effort to keep
the public informed, through the columns of the Daily
Neivs and other journals, of what seemed to him to be the
real questions at issue. His voice was one of the most
persuasive and strenuous of those which kept urging the
cause of peace, and that chiefly on three grounds.
First, as will have appeared from all the later chapters of
this biography, he believed that in the quarrel between
Russia and Turkey, Russia was in the main right, and
Turkey -wrong ; that the Turks in Europe were not a
nation, but a barbarian military caste, holding down in a
condition little better than slavery many millions of persons,
alien to themselves in race and religion, and far superior
in civilisation ; that when once England by rejecting the

252 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
Berlin memorandum had refused to join in coercing
the Turks, the only way for these Eastern Christians to
attain to the freedom which was their right, and which
would inevitably lead them to form flourishing and
happy communities, was through the miUtary inter
vention of Russia. Secondly, he believed that a war
between England and Russia, besides creating untold
misery among the vast working population of these
islands, would almost inevitably lead to the loss of India.
Thirdly, he thought it impossible that if such a war
were once to begin, it could by any means be confined to
a struggle between England and Russia alone. Accord
ing to him, it would certainly have led to ci-vil war in
Austria, the Hungarians taking the side of the Turks,
and the Slavonic provinces of the Empire, which
supplied the majority of the officers of the whole army,
making common cause with the Russians, Bulgarians,
and Serbs. " But if Austria does meddle -with the
question," he wrote in the last days of 1877, " Germany
wiU certainly come into the fray, and if Germany, then
France and Italy; and we should thus have a raging
European war that would satisfy even Lord Beaconsfield.
The map of Europe would inevitably require to be re
modelled. Holland in all probability would disappear,
and form a most important naval province of the German
Empire. Farewell then to British naval supremacy.
We should become a part of the European miUtary
system, with a crushing debt, a huge conscription, and
sundry other troubles, domestic and foreign, which we
cannot foresee."

LAST YEARS. 253
Fortunately, this danger was averted. The Berlin
Congress saw the perils that threatened the whole of
Europe, and peace was made.
The Treaty of BerUn of July, 1878, settled the
Eastern Question — at least, for some years — and with it
Sandwith's public work may be said to have come to an
end. He was destined, however, to pay one more visit
to the lands which had exercised a fascination so nearly
fatal to him. In the spring of the following year the
Marquis of Bath, who had taken a prominent part in
the agitation in favour of the Eastern Christians, pro
posed to him to make a tour through Bulgaria and
Eastern Roumelia, to study the effects of the war and
the prospects of those countries under their new organi
sations. Sandwith started, not without some mis
givings ; for more than once, amid all the comforts of
his home, he had been the victim of intermittent
attacks of his enemy, the Ser-vian fever ; but the plan of
the journey was so weU arranged, and the comforts of
the traveUers seemed likely to be so thoroughly
attended to, that he thought he might venture once
more. Accordingly, the party left London on the
journey which has been described in Lord Bathes book,
" Observations on Bulgarian Affairs." Unhappily, they
had scarcely entered the Bulgarian plains when Sand
with was again stricken down, and, after being carefully
and kindly tended at the house of an American
missionary, he was obliged to make the best of his way
to Constantinople, and thence home.
For another year he remained quietly at Wimbledon,.

254 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
and then, in the spring of 1880, a terrible blow fell
upon him. It was at a moment when everything
seemed happy, prosperous, and full of abundant promise.
Sandwith was apparently better in health than he had
been since his last trip to Bulgaria. His family was
gro-wing up around him, and was at that stage when
sons and daughters may well become a source of special
and daily -increasing pleasure to a father. Moreover, the
sudden dissolution of Parliament was to him, as much as
to any one in England, a matter of intense interest. For
a moment he may have thought of becoming a candidate
for some constituency, and had he done so there can be
little doubt that he would have been triumphantly
returned, for the question before the country was
his question par excellence, and to a very large section
of his countrymen his voice on aU the topics connected
with the Eastern policy of Lord Beaconsfield was a
voice of authority. He did not stand ; but the victory
of his party and the return of Mr. Gladstone to power
filled him with rejoicing no less real than would
have been the case had he himself been one of the
successful candidates. In a moment all this happy
condition of things was overturned. His -wife — the
sweet companion of twenty years, who had not only
ruled his household in the most admirable manner, but
had shared all his thoughts, and had stimulated and
cheered him through all his public actions — was sud
denly discovered to be very ill. None had suspected
the fact, for her energy had been unbounded, and
the amount of work habitually done by her had been

LAST YEARS. 255
little less than astonishing ; but a cold, caught during
the severe winter, had settled upon her lungs, and it
was evident that she was seriously ailing. Dr. Quain
thought that a few weeks at Hastings might restore
her, and thither she was sent ; but, unfortunately, to no
good purpose. On her return her husband took her to
Dr. Andrew Clark, who, to his dismaj^, pronounced that
the mischief had already gone so far that recovery was
extremely doubtful. Davos was the only chance, and
to Davos accordingly — that upland valley in the Grisons,
the fine air of which has brought back so many invalids
to life — they went in the following July. Most un-
luckUy, the season was exceptionally bad, and though
Mrs. Sandwith improved in health during the first few
months, the raw and wet winter which foUowed was
disastrous, not only to herself, but to her husband ; for
he, too, was more iU than any one was aware of at the
time, and it seemed as if the rare mountain atmosphere
only served to bring out his malady.
In the early months of 1881 his friends began to be
distressed by the tone and contents of his letters. He
complained of pain in the region of the heart, of being
suddenly awakened with tormenting pains across the
chest, and with an intolerable feeling of suffocation.
He had felt something of the same symptoms before,
in 1879, during the summer hoUday which he and his
family passed together at Plymouth. Even then he
feared the worst from them, and now, in April, 1881, he
wrote to his brother : — " Cases of recovery from heart
disease are one in a thousand, and are not to be counted

256 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
on in the least. Nevertheless, in spite of oneself, they
are some little comfort. There is Miss N — • — -, and
Miss Martineau; the latter lived to eighty or more.
On the other hand, my old friend Acton, the surgeon,
consulted a neighbouring doctor on some unpleasant
symptoms, and a few days afterwards he was found
dead in his bathroom. After all it seems extremely
likely that I shaU die about sixty ; I fancy most men
do, especiaUy those who have knocked about a good
deal. I really think I am resigned to this fate, and
still I confess I cling to life for the sake of my children
— especially Lincoln, my darling boy — for whom I
have views and plans for his future. I fancy if I could
see him started in a profession I could calmly sing my
Nunc Dimittis."
When he wrote these words he professed that, except
just after sleep, he did not feel much out of health.
But in a few days there came a great change. They
had with difficulty made their way from Davos to
Montreux, on the Lake of Geneva, and after the first
fortnight there Sandwith became rapidly worse. So
grave were his symptoms that his brother-in-law
hurried out from London, to find him, as he thought,
dying, and his wife only kept alive by her indomitable
will. Their third daughter, too, who was with them,
was evidently following rapidly in her mother's foot
steps. No time was lost in placing them in the
train for Paris, where it was hoped that they might
rest a few days, and then be moved to London. But
in Paris it quickly became evident that Sandwith's life

LAST YEARS. 257
was ending. The disease — Dr. Herbert called it "a
breakdown of the arterial system" — made daily and
hourly progress, and early in the morning of the 16th
May, 1881, he died. He was buried in the quiet
cemetery at Passy, close to Paris.
Mrs. Sandwith had risen almost from a dying bed to
tend her husband in his illness, and the force and
endurance which she displayed under her terrible trial
were wonderful to behold. Strange to say, the shock
of his death did not kill her. She was able, after
remaining a few weeks in Paris, to be removed to Eaux
Bonnes, in the Pyrenees, thence to Tunbridge ¥/ells for
a last sight of England, and thence to Algiers. In a
pleasant villa on the heights between Mustapha and
El Biar she spent the winter and the spring, not
suffering acutely, and for the first few months feeling
some benefit from that exquisite climate. Before death
came to claim her she was destined to experience another
bereavement. Her third daughter, Helen, a beautiful
girl of seventeen, had been stricken with her own malady
some eighteen months before, and though for nearly a
year the extent of her danger was not known, as the
spring of 1882 advanced she became rapidly worse, and
died in April, in the same house with her mother. On
May 6th, within ten days of the anniversary of her
husband's death, Mrs. Sandwith passed quietly away.
This record of Sandwith's life may fitly end with the
letters in which two eminent men, writing from different

258 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
standpoints, have borne witness to his character and
work. The first is from Professor Max Miiller, and was
written on the day after Sandwith died : —
"Oxford, llth May, 1881.
" My deae Waed,
"I deeply feel the loss you have suffered — ay, which
England has suffered — through the sudden death of Sandwith. I am
often asked by my friends abroad, how it is that England keeps
afloat 1 and I always say it is due to England's unknown worthies.
He was one of them ; and while the country erects monuments to the
serene selfishness of Disraeli, a few lines in the papers is all the
tribute paid to one whose life was truly spent in the service of
his country and his fellow-creatures. If the Spirit of truth could hold
the balance — as it does on the old Egyptian monuments — between the
real worth of two such men as Sandwith and Disraeli, how the world
would be astonished ! I knew Sandwith when he came back fresh from
Kars — a handsome young fellow- — courage beaming from his face. If at
that time he had thought life was a game to be played, there was no
pinnacle he could not have climbed. But I never heard him make a
concession. Straight as an arrow he flew through life, a devoted
lover of truth, a despiser of all quibbles political, moral, and
ecclesiastical. And he has had his reward — a reward which the world
does not know — his own firm conviction that he was on the right path
and that, in spite of all storms and tossings, right will find its
level in the end. Nothing can ever be lost that is done in this faith
in the straight, the direct, and I believe, in spite of all successful
schemers, the shortest line that man in this short life can follow —
the line of right, truth, justice, unselfishness, and love. "We are
poorer, England is poorer, in losing such a man.
" Ever yours truly,
"F. MAX MtJLLER."
The second is from Canon Liddon : —
"3, Amen Court, St. Paul's, E.C.,
" June 5tli, 1884.
" My dear Mr. YVard,
" I have been trying in vain to put my hand upon some
documents which would have enabled me to write something less
unworthy of Dr. Sandwith than, as I fear, these few words must be.

LAST YEARS. ib'.)
" That he is one of the most remarkable persons whom I have
known in life becomes stronger with the lapse of time. His work and
his character were alike distinguished.
"1. It may be questioned whether any other Englishman has
contributed so much as he to the relief of the Christian populations
in European Turkey.
" The events of 1876 and 1877 may not have resulted in all that
was hoped for by the friends of the Eastern Christians. But unless
I am quite misinformed, they have done much on both sides of the
Turkish frontier to better a state of things which was previously
intolerable. Servia is now an independent State, and Bulgaria is
practically as much mistress of her destinies as Servia ; and in the
provinces which still remain under Turkish rule there is said to be
that sort of improvement which would naturally result from nearer
contact with Christian and European civilisation, and from the
consciousness of all who are entrusted with power that the eye of
Europe is upon them.
" It is no exaggeration to say that this result is largely due to
Dr. Sandwith. Of Englishmen who sympathised with the subject
races in European Turkey, some fought, some spoke, some wrote.
Dr. Sandwith did all three. The misery of the Christian populations
in Turkey was only rendered possible by the ignorance or the
incredulity of Europe. The misdeeds of Turkish ofiScials were too bad
to be believed, where they were not too bad to be described.
Dr. Sandwith was resolved that this ignorance, sometimes involuntary,
sometimes voluntary, should cease. That he might be sure of his
facts he incurred, again and again, great personal risk ; and in
describing what he had witnessed, he incurred, again and again, much
ungenerous criticism. But his witness had its effect. His absolute
honesty was never questioned, and those who knew him knew that
his feelings, even when rising into indignation, were always controlled
by his sense of right. I remember being greatly struck by the
impression produced by a speech he made at Oxford, and his influence
upon English opinion was thus considerable, because it was known
that he could act as well as speak, and that he shrank from no toil
and from no danger in promoting a cause which he had deeply at heart.
Never shall I forget the warm terms of respect and admiration
in which a Servian at Belgrade described his conduct during the early
autumn of 1876.
" 2^The two points which were insisted on were his courage and

260 HUMPHRY SANDWITH.
his tenderness, and it was in the combination of these that the charm
of Dr. Sandwith's character lay. I have never kno-wn any one who
seemed to be at once more intolerant of wrong and more tenderly alive
to suffering. He had the head of a man and the heart of a woman,
if any one ever had, and it was this union of qualities which
made him the king of men that lie was felt to be by the Eastern
peoples. Perhaps I ought to add that the characteristic which struck
me most in him was his entire disinterestedness. It was possible
enough to disagree with some of his opinions, but it was absolutely
impossible to suspect him of a selfish motive, or to doubt that his
career was governed by a i-esolute determination to do the utmost he
could for the good of his fellow-creatures, at whatever cost to
himself. " There were grave questions, as you would know, about which he
and I could not agree in those years during which we saw most
of each other. But I always hoped that everything might be
in store for so fine and generous a character ; and I have been told
that his last hours in the world were all that a Christian would
desire. Eor myself, I shall always think of him with true respect,
and, indeed, affection. "I am, dear Mr. Ward,
" Yours very truly,
"H. P. LIDDON."
Those who knew Sandwith best will be most inclined
to agree with these estimates of his character, its
directness and disinterestedness. For a cause which
appealed strongly to him, he placed no limits on the
sacrifices he would make ; no time, no energy, no trouble
was too much for him to expend, without a thought of
any reward but the consciousness of having done his
work well. In this lay a great part of his strength.
The rest he derived from his genial disposition, from
manners that were full of fascination, and from that
indefinable quality which always secures for its

LAST YEARS. 261
possessors the affection of those with whom it is their
lot to live. His weakness lay in a certain want of
intellectual sympathy with points of view that were not
his, or with beliefs and reasonings outside the habit of
his mind. Partly, of course, this is the natural outcome
of a temperament like his ; romantic and enthusiastic
people must always be more or less one-sided. In part,
too, it was the result of his fragmentary early training ;
in part from his want, after he ceased to practise his
profession, of a definite sphere of action and of regular
work. Had he entered Parliament in 1 862, the discipline
of public life would have been in some respects of great
service to him, would have schooled him in the ways
which experience has prescribed for dealing with great
and complicated questions, and would probably have
rendered much fewer those fits of depression to which
he was often subject. But this was not to be. His
destiny was cast outside the circle of official routine or
of Parliamentary responsibility. It was left for him to
be what, after all, may be of no less consequence and of
no less service — a leader in the irregular forces which
Humanity enlists in her behalf, in the eternal campaign
against tyranny, barbarism, and wrong.

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New and Cheaper Edition, cloth, is. 6d. ; People's Edition, 6d.
Cassell 6^ Company, , Limited : Ludgate Hill, London; Paris ; and New York.
I 6 R.-8.84.

Selections from Cassell & Company's Volumes (Continued).

Universal History, Cassell's Illustrated. Vol. I., Early
and Greek History; Vol. II., The Roman Period; Vol. IIL, The Middle
Ages. gs. each. 
England, Cassell's History of. With about 2,000
Illustrations. Nine Vols., cloth, gs. each ; or in Library Binding, f,s, los.
United States, Cassell's History of the. With 600
Illustrations and Maps. 1,950 pages, extra crown 4to. Complete in Three
Vols., cloth, £\ 7s.; or in Library Binding, £1 los.
India, Cassell's History of. With about 400 Maps,
Plans, and Illustrations. Extra crown 4to, Two Vols, in One, cloth, iSs. ;
Two Vols., cloth, l8s.; or in Library Binding, £\.
Franco- German War, Cassell's History of the. Com
plete in Two Vols. New Edition. Containing nearly 500 Illustrations and
Plans of the Battle-fields. Cloth gilt, gs. each.
The Russo-Turkish War, Cassell's History of.
Complete in Two Vols. With about 500 Illustrations, gs. each ; or in
Library Binding, Two Vols, in One, 15s.
British Battles on Land and Sea. By James Grant.
With about 600 Illustrations. Three Vols., gs. each. Supplementary
Volume, embracing Recent British Battles, gs.
Old and New London. A Narrative of its History,
its People, and its Places. By E. Walford and W. Thornbury.
With 1,200 Illustrations. Complete in Six Vols., gs. each; or in Library
Binding, £z. 
Greater London. By Edward Walford. Com
plete in Two Vols. With about 400 Original Illustrations. Extra
crown 4to, cloth gilt, gs. each.
Our Own Country. An Illustrated Geographical and
Historical Description of the Chief Places of Interest in Great Britain. Com
plete in 6 Vols., with upwards of 200 Illustrations in each, 7s. 6d. each.
Old and New Edinburgh, Cassell's. Complete in
Three Volumes. With 600 Original Illustrations, specially executed for the
Work. Extra crown 4to, cloth, gs. each.
Decisive Events in History. By Thomas Archer.
With full-page Original Illustrations. Cloth gilt, 5s.
Technology, Manuals of. Edited by Prof. Ayrton,
F.R.S., and Richard Wormell, D.Sc, M.A. Illustrated throughout with
Practical Illustrations. A Prospectus sent post free on application.
Cassell <t- Company, Limited: Ludgate Hill, London; Pari^ ; and New York.

Selections from Cassell ,(• Company's Volumes (Continued).

The Life of Christ. By the Ven. Archdeacon Farrar,
D.D., F.R.S.
Library Edition, (yith Edition.) Two Vols., cloth, 24s.; morocco, ,f 2 2s.
Illustrated Edition. With about 300 Illustrations. Extra crown 4to,
cloth, gilt edges, 2is. ; calf or morocco, £2 2s.
Bijou Edition, complete in Five Vols., in case, los. 6d. the set.
Popular Edition, in One Vol., cloth, 6s. ; cloth gilt, gilt edges, 7s. 6d. ;
Persian morocco, ids. 6d. ; tree calf, 15s.
The Life and Work of St. Paul. By the Ven.
Archdeacon Farrar, D.D., F.R.S.
Library Edition, (icjth Thousand.) Two Vols., demy Svo, cloth, 24s. ;
morocco, £1 2s.
Illustrated Edition, with nearly 300 Illustrations, cloth, gilt edges, £,\ is. ;
morocco, £2 2s.
Popular Edition, cloth, 6s. ; cloth gilt, 7s. 6d. ; Persian morocco, los. 6d.
The Early Days of Christianity. By the Ven. Arch
deacon Farrar, D.D., F.R.S.
Library Edition. (Ninth Thousand^ Two Vols., demy Svo, cloth, 24s. ;
morocco, £2 2S.
Popular Edition, cloth, 6s. ; cloth gilt, 7s. 6d. ; Persian morocco, los. 6d.
The Old Testament Commentary for English Readers.
By various Writers. Edited by the Right Rev. C. J. Ellicott, D.D., Lord
Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. Complete in Five Vols., price 21s, each.
Vol. I. contains GENESIS to NUMBERS.
Vol. II. contains DEUTERONOMY to SAMUEL II.
Vol. III. contains KINGS I. to ESTHER.
Vol. IV. contains JOB to ISAIAH.
Vol. V. contains JEREMIAH to MALACHI.
The New Testament Commentary for English Readers.
Edited by the Right Rev. C. J. Ellicott, D.D., Lord Bishop of Gloucester
and Bristol. Three Vols., cloth, £'i 3s. ; or in half-morocco, ^4 14s. 6d.
Vol. I. contains the FOUR GOSPELS, ix is.
Vol. II. contains the ACTS to GALATIANS. £1 is.
Vol. III. contains the EPHESIANS to the REVELATION. £x is.
A Commentary on the Revised Version of the New
Testament. By Prebendary Humphry, B.D. 7s. 6d.
Sermons Preached at Westminster Abbey. By
the Rt. Rev. Alfred Barry, D.D., D.C.L., Bishop of Sydney. 5s.
The Bible Educator. Edited by the Very Rev. E. H.
Plumptre, D.D. Illustrated. Four Vols., 6s. each; or Two Vols., 21s.
The History of Protestantism. By the Rev. J. A.
Wylie, LL.D. With 600 Original Illustrations. Three Vols., £\ 7s.
Bible Dictionary, Cassell's. With nearly 600 Illus
trations. Crown 4to, I,i5g pages. Cloth, 7s. 6d. ; half-morocoo, los. 6d.
Cassell % Company, Limited: Ludgate Hill, London; Paris; and New York.
3

Selections from Cassell & Company's Volumes (Continued).
Romeo and Juliet. Edition de Luxe. Illustrated
with Twelve superb Photogravures by GoupiL & Co., Paris, from Original
Drawings by Frank Dicksee, A.R.A., expressly executed for this Work.
Price ^3 los. 
Character Sketches from Dickens. Second Series.
With Six Original Designs by Frederick Barnard. Reproduced in
Photogravure by GoupiL & Co., Paris. Printed on India paper; size,
20 X 14^. In Portfolio, price 21s.
Cathedral Churches of England and Wales.
Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial. Edited by the Rev. Professor Bonney,
F.R.S. Illustrated throughout. 2is.
The Magazine of Art. Yearly Volume. With about
500 Illustrations by the first Artists of the day, and beautifully-executed
Etching, for Frontispiece. Cloth gilt, gilt edges, i6s.

Picturesque Europe. Popular Edition. Vols. I., II. , &
III., with 13 Exquisite Steel Plates, and about 200 Original Engravings
by the best Artists in each. Cloth gilt, l8s. each. N.B. — The Original
Edition, in Five Magnificent Volumes, royal 410 size, can still be obtained,
price ;^I0 los.
Egypt : Descriptive, Historical, and Picturesque.
By Prof. G. Ebers. Translated by Clara Bell, with Notes by Samuel
Birch, LL.D., D.C.L., F.S.A. With Original Magnificent Engravings.
Cloth bevelled, gilt edges. Vol. I., £2 5s. ; Vol. '^^.,£2 12s. 6d.

Picturesque America. Complete in Four Vols., with 12
Exquisite Steel Plates and about 200 Original Wood Engravings in each.
Royal 4to, £2 2s. each.
Landscape Painting in Oils, A Course of Lessons in.
By A. F. Grace, Turner Medallist, Royal Academy. With Nine Reproduc
tions in Colour. Extra demy folio, cloth, gilt edges, 42s.

Illustrated British Ballads. With Several Hundred
Original Illustrations by some of the first Artists of the day. Complete in
Two Vols. Cloth, 7s. 6d. each ; cloth, gilt edges, los. 6d. each ; half-
morocco. Two Vols.,^1 Ss.

The Dore Fine Art Volumes comprise—

£s. d.
Milton's Paradise Lost .1 10
The Dorfi Bible, 2 Vols, cloth 2 10 o
,, ,, ,, morocco 3 10 o

Don Quixote . . . o 15 o
Munchausen . . .050
Fairy Tales Told Again .050

Cassell % Company, Limited: Ludgate Hill, London; Paris; and New York.

Selections from Cassell % Company's Volumes (Continued).
Cassell's New Natural History. Edited by Prof.
Duncan, M.B., F.R.S., assisted by eminent Writers. With nearly 2,000
Illustrations. Complete in 6 Vols., gs. each.
European Butterflies and Moths. By W. F. Kirby.
With 61 Coloured Plates. Demy 410, cloth gilt, 35s.
The Book of the Horse. By S. Sidney. With
Twenty-five Coloured Plates, and 100 Wood Engravings. New and Revised
Edition. Demy 4to, cloth, 31s. 6d.; half-morocco, £2 2s.
The Illustrated Book of Poultry. By L. Wright.
With 50 Coloured Plates, and numerous Wood Engravings. Demy 410,
cloth, 3 IS. 6d.; half-morocco, £2 2s.
The Illustrated Book of Pigeons. By R. Fulton.
Edited by L. Wright. With Fifty Coloured Plates and numerous En
gravings. Demy 410, cloth, 31s. 6d.; half-morocco, £2 2s.
Canaries and Cage- Birds, The Illustrated Book of.
With Fifty-six Coloured Plates and numerous Illustrations. Demy 4to, 35s.
Dairy Farming. By Prof. Sheldon. With Twenty-
five Fac-simile Coloured Plates, and numerous Wood Engravings. 31s. 6d.
Dog, The Illustrated Book of the. By Vero Shaw,
B. A. Cantab. With Twenty-eight Fac-simile Coloured Plates, drawn from Life,
and numerous Wood Engravings. Demy 4to, cloth, 35s.; half-morocco, 45s.
Cassell's Popular Gardening. A Comprehensive
Practical Guide to the successful cultivation of Flowers, Fruit, and
Vegetables. Illustrated. Vol. I. Js.
European Ferns : their Form, Habit, and Culture.
By James Britten, F.L.S. With Thirty Fac-simile Coloured Plates, Painted
from Nature by D. Blair, F.L.S. Demy 410, cloth gilt, gilt edges, 21s.
Familiar Wild Birds. By W. Swaysland. First
Series. With Forty Full-page Exquisite Coloured Illustrations. 12s. 6d.
Familiar Garden Flowers. First, Second, and Third
Series. By Shirley Hibberd. With Forty Full-page Coloured Plates by
F. E. Hulme, F.L.S., in each. 12s. 6d. each.
Familiar Wild Flowers. By F. E. Hulme, F.L.S.,
F.S.A. Complete in Five Series. With Forty Coloured Plates in each.
I2S. 6d. each.
Vignettes from Invisible Life. By John Badcock,
F.R.M.S. With numerous Illustrations specially executed for the Work.
3s. 6d. 
Cassell & Company, Limited: Ludgate Hill, London; Pans; and New York.

Selections from Cassell & Company's Volumes (Continued).

The Encyclopaedic Dictionary. Containing all the
Words in the English Language, with a Full Account of their Origin,
Meaning, Pronunciation, and Use. Seven Divisional Volumes now ready,
price IDS. 6d. each ; or Double Vols., in half-morocco, 2ls. each.
The Dictionary of English History. A Complete
Record of the Doings of the English Nation at Home and Abroad. 21s.
Library of English Literature. Edited by Professor
Henry'Morley. With Illustrations taken from Original MSS., &c. Each
Vol. complete in itself. Original Edition, complete in Five Vols., 58s. 6d.
*** Vols. I. and IL, Popular Edition, now ready, 7s. 6d. each.
Dictionary of English Literature. Being a Compre
hensive Guide to English Authors and their Works. By W. Davenport
Adams. Cheap Edition, 720 pages, extra fcap. 4to, cloth, 7s. 6d.
A First Sketch of English Literature. By Professor
Henry Morley. Crown Svo, gi2 pages, cloth, 7s. 6d.
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Giving the Deriva
tion, Source, or Origin of 20,000 Words that have a Tale to Tell. By Rev.
Dr. Brewer. Enlarged and Cheaper Edition, cloth, 3s. 6d.
Cassell's Concise Cyclopaedia. A Cyclopaedia in
One Volume, containing comprehensive and accurate information, brought
down to the Latest Date. Cloth, 15s. ; roxburgh, l8s.
The Royal Shakspere. Vols. I. and II., containing
Exquisite Steel Plates and Wood Engravings. The Text is that of Prof. Delius,
and the Work contains Mr. Furnivall's Life of Shakspere. Price 15s. each.
Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare. Edited by Charles
and Mary Cowden Clarke. With 600 Illustrations by H. C. Selous.
Three Vols., royal 410, cloth gilt, £¦}, 3s.
The Leopold Shakspere. Including Introduction
and Life of Shakspere by F. J. FuRNIVALL. With about 400 Illustrations.
Small 4to, cloth, 6s. ; cloth gUt, 7s. 6d. ; half-morocco, los. 6d. Morocco
or tree calf, ;^i is.
PRACTICAL GUIDES to PAINTING, with numerous Coloured Plates and
Full Instructions by the Artists : —
Animal Painting- in Water
Colours. With 18 Coloured Plates
by Frederick Taylor. 5s.
Flower Painting in Water
Colours. First & Second Series.
By F. E. Hulme, F.L.S. Ss.each.
Tree Painting in Water
Colours. By W. H. J. Boot. 5s.
China Painting. By Florence
Lewis. 5s.

Water-Colour Painting, A
Course of. By R. P. Leitch. 5s.
Figure Painting in Water
Colours. By B. Macarthur
and Jennie Moore. 7s. 6d.
Neutral Tint, A Course of
Painting in. By R. P. Leitch. 5s.
Sepia Painting, A Course of.
By R- P. Leitch. Cloth, ss.

Cassell &^ Company, Limited : Ludgate Hill London; Parts; and New York.
6

Selections from Cassell % Company's Volumes (Continued).

The Practical Dictionary of Mechanics. Containing
15,000 Drawings, with Comprehensive and Technical Description of each
Subject. Four Volumes, cloth, ^f 4 4s.
Science for All. Complete in Five Vols. Edited by
Dr. Robert Brown, M.A., F.L.S., &c., assisted by Eminent Scientific
Writers. Each containing about 350 Illustrations. Cloth, gs. each.
Popular Educator, Cassell's. New and thoroughly
Revised Edition. Complete in Six Vols. Price 5s. each.

Technical Educator, Cassell's. Illustrated. Four
Vols., cloth, 6s. each; or Two Vols., half-calf, 31s. 6d. Popular Edition.
Vol. I. 5s. 
The Sea : its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, and
Heroism. By F. Whymper. Complete in Four Vols., each containing
100 Original Illustrations. 4to, 7s. 6d. each. Library Binding, Two Vols., 25s.
The Countries of the World. By Robert Brown,
M.A., Ph.D., F.L.S., F.R.G.S. Complete in Six Vols., with about 750
Illustrations. 4to, 7s. 6d. each. Library Binding, Three Vols., 37s. 6d.
Peoples of the World. Vols. I., IL, IIL, and IV. By
Dr. Robert Brown. With numerous Illustrations. 7s. 6d. each.

Cities of the World. Complete in Three Vols. Illus
trated throughout with fine Illustrations and Portraits. Extra crown 410,
cloth gilt, 7s. 6d. each.
Gleanings from Popular Authors. Complete in Two
Vols. With Original Illustrations, gs. each.

Heroes of Britain in Peace and War. By E. Hodder.
With 300 Illustrations. Poptdar Edition, complete in Two Vols., cloth, 5s.
each.
Energy in Nature. By Wm. Lant Carpenter, B.A.,
B.Sc. With 80 Illustrations. 3s. 6d.
Electrician's Pocket- Book, The. Translated, with
Additions by Gordon Wigan, M.A., Member of the Society of Telegraph
Engineers and Electricians. 5s.
The Field Naturalist's Handbook. By the Rev. J. G.
Wood and Theidore Wood. Cloth, 5s.

Cassell & Company, Limited: Ludgate Hill, London ; Paris ; ana New York.

Selections from Cassell ^ Company's Volumes (Continued).

The Book of Health. A Systematic Treatise for
the Professional and General Reader upon the Science and
the Preservation of Health. By Eminent Physicians and Surgeons.
Edited by Malcolm Morris. Price 21s.
Our Homes, and How to Make them Healthy. With
numerous practical Illustrations. Edited by Shirley Forster Murphy,
with contributions by the highest authorities. Royal Svo, cloth, 15s.
The Family Physician. A Modern Manual cf
Domestic Medicine. By Physicians and Surgeons of the Principal
London Hospitals. Royal 8vo, cloth, 21s.
The Year Book of Treatment. A Critical Review
for Practitioners of Medicine. 320 pages, cloth, 5s.
Medicine, Manuals for Students of. By Examiners
and Teachers in well-known Medical Schools. A Prospectus will be sent
post free on application.
Clinical Manuals for Practitioners and Students of
Medicine. A Prospectus will be sent post free on application.
The Domestic Dictionary. An Encyclopaedia for the
Household. illustrated throughout. 1,280 pages, royal Svo, Cheap
Edition, 7s. 6d. ; half-roan, gs.
Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery. The Largest,
Cheapest, and Best Book of Cookery. With g,ooo Recipes, and numerous
Illustrations. Cheap Edition, Js. 6d. ; half- roan, gs.
Cassell's Household Guide. New and Revised Edition.
With Illustrations on nearly every page, and Coloured Plates. Library
Binding, Two Vols., 24s. ; half-calf, 31s. 6d.
Choice Dishes at Small Cost. Containing Practical
Directions to success in Cookery, and Original Recipes for Appetising and
Economical Dishes. By A. G. Payne. 3s. 6d.
A Year's Cookery. Giving Dishes for Breakfast,
Luncheon, and Dinner for Every Day in the Year, with Practical Instructions
for their Preparation. By Phillis Browne. Cheap Edition, cloth, 3s. 6d.
What Girls Can Do. A Book for Mothers and
Daughters By Phillis Browne, Author of " A Year's Cookery," &c.
Crown Svo, cloth. Cheap Edition, 3s. 6d.
1^ Cassell & Oompemy's Complete Catalogue, containing a
List of Several Hundred Volumes, including Bibles and Religious Works, Fine-
Art Volumes, Children's Books, Dictionaries, Educational Works, Handbooks
and Guides, History, Natural History, Household and Domestic Treatises,
Science, Serials, Travels, &^c. &'c., sent post free on application.
Cassell & Company, Limited : Ludgate Hill, London ; Paris ; and New York.
S

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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