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Updated: May 28, 2025
The man in gold, armed to the teeth, is what is called a cavass, and these swells behind are the representatives, male or female, of some foreign potentate, taking a walk. It would be quite infra dig. to go without one of these useless appendages.
A "droshky" is a low, four-wheeled, open carriage, plying for hire. The word is Russian. Attended by the cavass of the Swedish Embassy, old Ali, I drove down to the quay on a fresh, sunny October morning, loaded all my boxes on board a caique, and was rowed by four men out to the Bosporus between anchored sailing vessels, steamers, and yachts.
The Eastern habit of always having a cavass to walk in front of one in the public thoroughfares suited me very well; for modesty is seasoned by a display of force. It is agreeable to have under one's orders a man armed with a kourbash which one does not allow him to use.
It scarcely requires telling how these complications added weight to the cares with which the Emperor was already overladen. The writer once visited it. Arriving near, his Turkish cavass requested him to wait a moment. The man then advanced alone and cautiously, and knocked at the door. There was a conference, and a little delay; after which the cavass announced it was safe to go in.
The cavass took us into a chamber near the gate, and commanding a view of the whole court. There we found Mr. Brown and his lady, with several officers from the U.S. steamer San Jacinto. At this moment the sun, appearing above the hill of Bulgaria, behind Scutari, threw his earliest rays upon the gilded pinnacles of the Seraglio. The commotion in the long court-yard below increased.
The dignity of office is here upheld with something of the pomp and splendor of the East, even by the representative of democratic America. In our tours with Mr. Another native cavass, with a broadsword dragging at his side, usually brought up the rear.
They reckon their ancestry from the mother, and when my Cretan cavass, Hadji Houssein, spoke of his home, it was always as his "mother's house."
With the rest I provided for the defense of my house, barricaded the windows with mattresses, took another cavass guaranteed as faithful by my old one, Hadji Houssein, put a rifle and a box of cartridges at each window, besides organizing, with Colucci, a strong patrol of Cretans from the refugees in the consulate, to watch the roads, and waited events.
As the procession leaves the Seraglio at sunrise, we rose with the first streak of dawn, descended to Tophaneh, and crossed to Seraglio Point, where the cavass of the Embassy was in waiting for us. He conducted us through the guards, into the garden of the Seraglio, and up the hill to the Palace.
We were then at the end of August, 1866. My vice-consul lived in the city and provided for our communications, and when I had to go to the konak I went armed, and with a cavass also armed cap-
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