Travels in Turkey, Asia Minor, Syria, and across the desert into Egypt ...

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184 TRAVELS IN ASIATIC TURKEY,
master-general. On the march, the bands belonging to the Vizier,
Kia Bey, and several of the principal Pachas, occasionally struck
up a martial air of music. The Topgis, with their artillery, were
distributed, and attached to the most distinguished of the Pachas;
and no circumstance was omitted which could give an air of gran-
deur to this military spectacle.
In the evening Captain Skipsey, of his Majesty's sloop of" war
the Termagant, which we had descried in the morning off
Jaffa,
prior to our leaving the old ground of encampment, reached our
new station, with despatches from Admiral Lord Keith, and Sir
Ralph Abercrombie, to the Grand Vizer and Reis Effendi. He
quitted us on the following day with a part of the despatches with
which he was in
charged reply,
to repair to
Jaffa, and wait there
till die ensuing morning for those which were not yet in readiness
to be forwarded. Previously to his departure from the encamp-
ment, Captain Skipsey was by order of his Highness the Vizier,
invested with a pelice.
A detachment of Albanians, about six hundred strong, arrived
in the camp on the 26th; and on the ensuing day General Mus-
tapha, alias Campbell, reached us with despatches from Sir Sydney
Smith. The General, who is by birth a Scotchman, had resided
upwards of fifty years in Turkey, where he had embraced
the Mahomedan religion, and had, by gradual promotions, attain-
ed the rank of Cumbaragi Bashi, or General of bombardiers, in
the Turkish arm v. An implicit confidence having been reposed
in his talents and fidelity, he was, in his early career, entrusted
with the superintendence and construction of the military works in
the Turkish empire, several of which, executed under his direction,
are stiil in existence. At the time of this visit to the Turk-
ish camp he was between seventy and eighty years of age, and appeared
to be well informed, and to have received a polished educa-
tion. He had been repeatedly attacked by the plague, relative to
which disease he communicated to me a iiiiijular fact that had
come within his knowledge. A female Circassian slave of great
beauty was attacked by the plague, and sunk under the complaint ;
while her master, who had still continued an intercourse with her
during her illness, escaped the infection. From this and other similar
cases which have been recited to me, it would appear, that
a certain susceptibility is necessary to the reception of the disease,
or, in other words, that its contagious action is resisted by a cer-
tain state and condition of the body. Could this particular state