CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
QUEEN’S MESSENGERS.
HELENA, LADY HARROGATE
STORY OF CAPTAIN GLASS.
AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ROMANCE.
THE MONTH: SCIENCE AND ARTS.
THE INTELLIGENT MOUSE.
No. 735.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 1878.
QUEEN’S MESSENGERS.
Somewhat more than forty years ago, Mr BaillieFraser published a lively and instructive volumeunder the title A Winter’s Journey (Tatâr) fromConstantinople to Teheran. Political complicationshad arisen between Russia and Turkey‒anold story, of which we are witnessing a new versionat the present time. The English governmentdeemed it urgently necessary to send out instructionsto our representatives at Constantinople andTeheran; and this could only be done in thosedays by means of Messengers bold and hardyenough to bear a great amount of fatigue in thesaddle. Mr Fraser, intrusted with this duty, toldthe tale of his hard work. The word Tatâr, inTurkey, is applied to a native courier, guide, andcompanion, a hardy horseman who fulfils all thesefunctions, speaking two or more languages, andready to do the best that can be done to overcomethe multiplied tribulations of regions almost roadlessand innless. When travelling Tatâr, thesemen have been known to make truly wonderfuljourneys on horseback. One of special characterwas made in 1815, when the British governmentwished to convey to Persia the stirring news ofthe escape of Napoleon from Elba. The BritishEmbassy at Constantinople sent a Messenger fromthence to Demavend, a Persian city nearly twothousand miles distant, across a dangerously ruggedcountry; this amazing horse-ride was accomplishedin seventeen days; averaging nearly a hundred andtwenty miles a day.
Mr Baillie Fraser gives a vivid description of hisown experience in this kind of life, riding dayand night, and stopping only when the absoluteneed of a few hours’ rest drove him into awretched post-house or a mere hovel. It was‘a Tatâr journey of two thousand six hundredmiles, which for fatigue and anxiety, and sufferingfrom cold and exposure, I will venture to matchagainst anything of the sort that ever was done.’First came seven hundred and fifty miles acrossEuropean Turkey, from Belgrade to Constantinople;and then seven hundred along the wholeextent of Asia Minor to Amasia; but during theremaining seven weeks of the journey, he says:‘We have been wading night and day throughinterminable wastes of deep snow, exposed to allthe violence of storms, drift, and wind, with thethermometer frequently from fifteen to twentydegrees below zero. Our clothes and faces andbeards were clotted into stiff masses of ice; ou