Two bright spots alone shone through this turmoil and anxiety. At the Cape, Colonel Neville Chamberlain and Major Quinn (two nobler specimens of the conquerors of India could hardly be found) took me kindly by the hand; and as they told me, how with quiet demeanour and ironside determination of will, native levies were led, and victories won in India, I humbly resolved to follow, if I could, the noble example they gave me. An anecdote concerning a sword which Colonel Neville Chamberlain presented me with, may not be out of place in these pages. It was a weapon that had fallen into his hands after an engagement, and was considered a splendid specimen of Indian workmanship. In the year 1853 I was sent on a mission to Constantinople, and took the sword with me, and used to wear it in my frequent visits to the Seraskierat. Riza Pasha, who then presided there, asked me one day to allow him to look at it, and after gravely reading the Arabic characters embossed upon the blade, passed it on to other members of the Council Board. One and all seemed much surprised at the writing, and at my being the possessor of such a weapon. Mr Sarel, the dragoman of the Embassy, who was with me at the time, explained how it came from India, and into my possession. Riza asked to be allowed to show it to the Sultan, to which I consented, but never could get it returned. As, however, I repeatedly asked for it, and threatened to speak to the Ambassador on the subject, Riza one day sent me another sword, with a firman in a white satin bag, containing my nomination to the colonelcy of the second regiment of the Sultan’s Roumelian Guard. I was rather induced to look upon the affair as a mystification; but Sarel explained to me that it was quite serious, and in reality a compliment paid to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, and that I had better accept the sword and the commission, as I should never see Colonel Chamberlain’s sword again. In this manner I entered the Turkish army; and although I never assumed the actual command as colonel, it was (by a strange coincidence) one of those regiments that formed the brigade of cavalry which I afterwards commanded on the Danube. It was a curiously-officered regiment. I, the colonel, had been named through being the possessor of a certain sword; the lieutenant-colonel, Said Bey, through being the possessor of a wonderful flute (he had been chief flute-player to the Sultan); one of the majors, Mourad Bey, for being a renegade Frenchman; and the other major, an Irishman, for being the supposed son of an English Prime Minister. The men, however, were splendid fellows, and some became passionately attached to me. As a proof of this, one day when, as quartermaster-general of the Turkish forces, I was sending to Eupatoria, in the Crimea, Osman Pasha’s army from Cisebole, in the Bay of Bourgas, Halil Pasha, brother-in-law of the Sultan, and commander of the Turkish cavalry, refused to obey my