But the worst method of all in which to carry our load is to build it up on the pack-saddle so as to attract notice and commiseration from those who travel alongside. The Turkish _hamals_, indeed, may be seen staggering about Constantinople under enormous bales of merchandise, twice the height and apparently three times the weight of the herculean bearer; but a Turkish _hamal_, notwithstanding his profession, ignores the meaning of a sore back, moral or physical. Other jades may wince, but, under all circumstances, you may swear _his_ withers are unwrung. To be sure, the first article of his creed is resignation. Fatalism lulls him like opium, though, kinder than that pernicious drug, it leaves no torment of reaction to succeed its soothing trance. Hard work, hard fare, hard bed, hard words, hard lines in general, a tropical sun and the atmosphere of a jungle, it is all in the day’s work with _him_! _Backsheesh_ he will accept with a smile if he can get it, or he will do without, consoling himself that it is _kismet_, for “There is one God, and Mahomet is His prophet.” With this philosopher, indeed, “a contented mind is a perpetual feast,” otherwise how could he sustain his stalwart proportions on a morsel of black bread and a slice of watermelon? His dissipations, too, are mild as his daily meals. A screw of weak tobacco, folded in a paper cigarette, wraps him in a foretaste of his anticipated paradise; a mouthful of thick, black, bitter coffee stands him in lieu of beer, porter, half-and-half, early purl, blue ruin, and dog’s-nose. Once a week, or maybe once a month, he goes to the bath for two hours of uninterrupted enjoyment, emerging healthy, happy, refreshed, and clean as a new pin. Perhaps it is his frugal, temperate life, perhaps it is his calm, acquiescent disposition, that enables him thus to carry weight so complacently. He never fights under it, not he! Through the narrow lanes of Stamboul, across the vibrating wooden bridge of the Golden Horn, up the filthy stairs, not streets, of Pera, he swings along with regulated step and snorting groans, delivered in discordant cadence at each laborious footfall; but he carries his weight, that is the great point—he carries a great deal of it, and he carries it remarkably well—an example of humility and patience to the Christian who employs him, an object of comparison, not much in favour of the latter, between the votaries of the Crescent and the Cross.