The Express.
London, England, 1856-03-12 00:00:00

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TURIUBH

ARMY IN MINGRELIA.

r (FROM out iiPECTAL CORRESPONDENT.)
• TIIRAWIR CAMP, CHOPI, Fits. 7.
it has fallen DO Bly lot to traverse some bad roads
in Europe, and many more worse ones in Asia, but
the worst of all I have ever struggled over is that
from Redout•Baleh hither. No terms short of what
wesid seem to a weeder the extreme of hyperbole
'scold convey anything like an accurate ides of the
succession of ruts and quagmires of which, without
almost a single perch of interruption, the whole
twenty-live miles of the distance are made up; if,
exaggeration itself could give an approximate
Mks of the reality to the mind of any one in the
dilly enjoyment of the smooth macadamised road-
ways of Great Britain. Though passably well
'wanted, it has taken me nearly three whole days
to make the journey, and elsewhere, in Asia, I have
ridden sixty miles a-day, for a weak in succession,
with less resultant fatigue than this paltry distance
Ma seessioned. From the base of the bill on
which this camp is pitched, away westward to the
soy the whole face of the country is covered
with a thick fleece of primeval forest, through
which winds the serpentine Cbopi, and along or near
its bank runs the road—if such a name can be given
to the artificial track which the weather and the con-
stant passage of the Turkish transport animals have
converted into such a chain of miry gape and pitfalls
as it seldom falls to the lot of European eyes to
behold.

Shortly before noon of the 3rd I succeeded in get-
ting clear of &dont-Hsieh, where there was every-
thing to occasion personal discomfort, and nothing to
recompense for its endurance in the shape of mate-
rials for one's pen, and, led on by a native guide,
moved ahead with my little cavalcade of wretched
animals on the road to Horge. This last, as I men-'
tiooed in a previous letter, is distant from Redout-
Hsieh about ten miles, and is the point on the river
Chopi at which the flat-bottomed canoes from the
latter discharge their cargoes of provisions, which are
thence conveyed on hither by land carriage on
mules and horses. The son had sunk for more
than an boar away beyond the watery horizon
of the Elaine before we retched the scattered
collection of log buts which compose the w-
eaned village of Bergs, and it was nearly
half an hour later still when we drew
up before the door of Oeorgy Bey, the chief
man of the district, to whose hospitality I had been
recommended. The Bey himself, however, was un-
fortunately styrene; and as his wife was no way
pressing in her offers of a shelter for the night, I
gladly availed myself of the offer of an empty house
made by her nephew, who lived close by. During the
night a furious rain storm set in, and as it con-
tinued till far on in the afternoon of the fol-
lowing day, further movement was out of the ques-
tion. The supply of firing, however, being plen-
tiful, and rice, poultry, eggs, and fresh pork
having been brought in in rather liberal quan-
tities by visitors, the discomfort attending the day's
detention was not altogether unredeemed, espe-
cially as two or three of the " ladies" of the village
paid me a visit in the course of the day in company
with their male relatives; and so, though not one of
them spoke anything but Mingrelian, helped by their
very presence to relieve the dulness of the passing
hours. Though I shall have occasion to say more
hereafter about these fair ones, I slay just remark
here that they struck me as being, in almost every
instance, vastly superior to the women of Abasia,
whilst the men were in proportion as physically infe-
rior to those of the latter _ province—possessing

neither their beauty of feiture, commanding
gracefulness of figure, nor smallness of hand
and foot. In each and all, however, of these
particulars the women I have as yet seen in Mingre-
lie come nearer to the popular Ideal of a Circassian
girl in England than any I have hitherto met with.
They are generally tall, dark-haired, and tending to
embonpoint, but distinguished by a natural granted-
new of figure and carriage that more than redeems
this latter tendency from any approach to 00111 M.
nese, whilst their eyes possess all the gazelle-like
bluets and lustre of the real Eastern beauty. As
ea illustration and example of every one of then
physical attracting, I must not forget to mention the !
daughter of (homy Bey, a mature peel of fourteen,
who, with her mother, made a flying call in the
course of the day. I had heard at Horga that this
inset diamond had been demanded from her father
by Omer Paola, who even gave Georgy a medjidteh
(deitoration) of the fourth class, in hope of thereby
securing Zilhansh (the daughter); but on the grounds
of difference of religion—so I am assured—the or-
thodox Bey refused to part with her to any but a
good Christian—i.e., any one who can make the
sign of the coon who eats pork, and observes the
few periodical fasts, which here form the sum and
substance of religious duty. In lax sttention to
these few particulars lies the whole of that fugitive
Christianity which hare prevails ; and as Omer, how-
seerlittle he may be of • true Turk, could not lay
claim to the above qualifications, Zilhaneh remains
for some good son of the church who can.
The morning of the bth being floe, I left Horga
early, is hopes of reaching this before sunset, as the
distance is only about lb miles; but it it were pos-
sible for any reed to be worse than what I had
already crossed over from Redont-Haleh, that from
Horga hither surpassed, in the depth of its mud and
the frequency of its quagmires, the worst parts of the
other. Dead horses Lay as thick as paving-stones, out-
numbering by far the proportionthat polluted the air on
the first stage of the way to Horga, and in many plans
laies:i Ur forming a bridge over which my own animals
n the worst spots of this most terrible track.
Uwe several times, however, did the baggage hones
hiti lamming portmanteaus and saddle-bags in
sash baths of miry filth as the London and Constar].
thmple maker had foreseen and soaking the
eelant• accordingly in fluid abominations which all
the assets et Araby would hardly sweeten or disin-
fect. Through such a succession of pitfalls, however,
did we perseveringly struggle till dusk, when we
were still some half-dozen of miles from the camp,
and were compelled to seek shelter for the night in
the only single inhabited hoses of a village whose
name I could not ascertain. Shortly after the arrival
of the Turks the whole of the inhabitants had aban-
donedt the place, leaving only the solitary individual,
elm with hie wife, mother, sister, and a couple
of children, occupied the miserable block-house before
which the guide drew up. The owner of the house
refused to entertain us, and, in spite of a display of
sneer money, declared that he could afford no scoom-
ssodatioo; hearing which, my Greek, who had been
twice unseated during the day's struggles through
the mud, dismounted, and in more forcible than
elegant Hellenic, declared that there and there only
would we put up for the night. As he seconded
these assurances by the exhibition of a formidable
holster pistol, and mouthed out the most terrible
theists at the same time, the lone villager was fain
le give in, and so we installed ourselves in the
midst of the timid and indignant females within.
The house consisted, as usual, of only one apartment,
and here, after the family had boiled their evening
meal of pasta, we performed our own coin's., and
spread oar coaches for the night. The man himself
spoke Tartish; and this, aided by a general distribu-
tion of tea to the household and a liberal allowance of
sugar to the children, led before bedtime to a state of
grange cordials that was greatly in advance of that
which fleet greeted our arrival. One of the two
mitten that farmed the sleeping plains of the family,
was eat apart for myself; and on the other, some ten
feet ofL on the opposite side of the house, the whole of
elskasusuliold proper turned in. And thus the night
' pewit sway, a large fire being kept burning in the
atlas et the floor till moraing, at the first grey
ilia of whicheverybody was up, and the day's
delfts began. After a breakfast of pasta and boiled
pseh, I prosteded on my Journey, and finally reached
this Gasp about noon, after riding through six miles
of road as bed as any we had crossed from Horga.
I seize the opportunity of a Turkish offioer's start-
ing for Trebizond, to send you this brief record of the
• journey, leaving till the next opportunity some
account of the camp, and of what has been done since
the Turks first occupied this position on their way
from Sugdidi to Redout-Haleh.