The word backshich is the first of which a traveller learns the meaning in Turkey; it signifies fee, or present. The Pasha receives backshich for procuring a place or a pension for some petitioner; then, of course, it is a present, and precisely as unwelcome as it is unexpected: the boy who picks up your glove or your whip, as you ride along the street, demands backshich—he must be fee’d for his civility. Nothing is to be done in the country without backshich. On entering the creek we despatched the servant and one of the caïquejhes to the house of the Greek Archbishop of Broussa, to whom we had brought a letter, and who had removed to the coast for the benefit of sea-bathing; but his Holiness was from home, and there was consequently no ingress for us. In this dilemma, for hotels there are none, we had no alternative but to accept for a few hours the hospitality of one of the boatmen, until we could procure horses to carry us on to Broussa; and we consequently made our debût in Asia Minor in an apartment up two flights of rickety stairs, walled with mud, and shivering under our footsteps. But it suffices to state that the caïquejhe was a Greek, for it to be understood at once by every Eastern traveller that the house was cleanly to perfection; and our reception by the hostess, even at that untoward hour, courteous and attentive. Before the servant had brought the luggage up stairs, my father, worn out by fatigue, was sound asleep upon the divan; and, when the attendant had withdrawn, I also gladly prepared myself for the enjoyment of a few hours’ repose; and, casting off my shoes, and winding a shawl about my head, I took possession of the opposite side of the sofa, and should soon have followed his example, when I was aroused by the light foot of the caïquejhe’s wife in the apartment, who, opening a small chest, cast over me a sheet and coverlet as white as snow, and then retired as quietly as she came. But that sheet and coverlet changed the whole tide of my feelings—the chest in which they had been kept was of cypress wood—they were strongly impregnated with its odour—I was exhausted by fatigue and excitement—and a thousand visions of death and the grave came over me in the half dreamy state in which I lay, that by no means added to my comfort.