Among the most amusing specimens of the race must be reckoned the Jew and Armenian money-changers — squalid, lean, and hungrylooking fellows — whose turbans and ragged gabardines were ostentatiously dirty and poverty-stricken, — who prowled about the camp with an eternal raven-croak of " I say, John, change de monnish — change de monnish," relieved occasionally by a sly tinkle of a leathern purse well filled with dollars and small Turkish coin. They evaded the vigilance of the sentries, and startled officers half asleep in the heat of the sun, by the apparition of their skinny hands and yellow visages within the tent, and the cuckoo- cry, " I say, John, change de monnish." Their appearance was the greatest compliment that could be paid to the national character. The oldest Turk had never seen one of them near a native camp, and the tradition of ages affirmed that where soldiers come the race disappeared. Indeed, they only showed at the English camp in the sun- time. They were a sort of day- ghost which vanished at the approach of darkness, and the croak and the jingle were silent, and they spirited themselves gently away ere twilight, and where they lived no man could tell. Any one who has seen Yernet's picture, at Versailles, of the taking of Abd-el-Kader's Smala, will at once recognize the type of these people in the wonderful figure of the Jew who is flying with his treasure from the grasp of the French swordsman.
A fleet of thirty transports was anchored off the barracks. The Sappers were engaged fitting up horse-boxes on board the transports. The Sea of Marmora was covered with the white sails of transports and store-ships, making way against the current, and the little wharf and landing-place at Scutari were alive with men loading boats with provisions or munitions of war.
In strange contrast to all this life and activity, the natives idled on the shore, scarcely raising their heads to look at what was passing around them; or taking a very unobtrusive and contemplative interest in the labours of the soldiery, as they watched them from their smoking-perches in front of the cafes of the town, or of the sutlers' booths pitched along the shore. Lord Raglan's quarters seemed to be an especial resort for them. The house, a low wooden building two stories high, very clean, and neatly painted and matted within, was situated on the beach, about threequarters of a mile from the barrack. In front was a tolerably spacious courtyard, with high walls, well provided with little stone boxes for the sparrows and swallows to build in, and inside this court led horses and chargers, belonging to the aides and officers on duty, might be seen pacing about. Directly opposite to the entrance of the court was a wooded knoll, with a few gravestones peering above the rich grass; and a Turkish fountain, in front of a group of pine-trees, usually surrounded by water-carriers, was in the foreground.
Groups of Turks, Greeks, and Armenians, each distinct, were to be seen reclining at the foot of these trees, gazing listlessly into the courtyard, while they carried on monosyllabic conversations at long intervals between puffs of smoke. The beach, which somewhat resembled that at Folkestone at high water, was bounded by a tolerable road, a favourite walk of the women and children of Chalcedon and the suburbs beyond it; but these animated bundles of bright-coloured clothing scarcely deigned to look at the men in uniforms, or to turn their heads at the jingle of sword and spur. In the stagnant water which ripples almost imperceptibly on the shore there floated all forms of nastiness and corruption, which the prowling dogs, standing leg-deep as they wade about in search of offal, cannot destroy. The smell from the shore was noisome, but a few yards out from the fringe of buoyant cats, dogs, birds, straw, sticks — in fact, of all sorts of abominable flotsam and jetsam, which bob about on the pebbles unceasingly — the water is exquisitely clear. The slaughter-houses for the troops, erected by the seaside, did not contribute, as may readily be imagined, to the cleanliness of this filthy beach, or the wholesomeness of the atmosphere.