Vivre

et leur distribution chez les Turcs, Fr. The kind of provisions, . and the manner in which they are distributed among the Turks. The food or provisions for the Turkish soldiery form an immediate part of the military baggage. The government supplies flour, bread, biscuit, rice, bulgur or peeled barley, butter, mutton, and beef, and grain for the horses, which is almost wholly barley. The bread is generally moist, not having been leavened, and is almost always ready to mould. On which account the Armenians, who are the bakers, bake every day in ovens that have been constructed under ground for the use of the army. When there is not sufficient time to bake bread, biscuit is distributed among the men. The ration of bread for each soldier consists of one hundred drams per day, or fifty drams of biscuit, sixty of beef or mutton, twenty-five of butter to bake the peeled barley in, and fifty of rice. The rice is given on Friday every week, on which day they likewise receive a ration of fifty drams of bulgur mixed with butter, as an extraordinary allowance, making a kind of water-gruel. These provisions are distributed in two different quarters. The meat is given out at the government butchery, where a certain number of Armenians, Greeks, and Jews regularly attend. Each company sends a head cook, who goes with a cart and receives the allowance from a sort of quarter-master serjeant, who is in waiting with a regular return of what is wanted for each oda. This person is stiled among the Turks Meidan Chiaous . He stands upon a spot of ground which is more elevated than the rest, and receives the allowance due to his district. The distribution of bread, . is made within the precincts of the Tefterdar-Bascy, where the Vekil-karet attends as director or super intendant of stores and provisions, and by whose order they are delivered. When the allowance is brought to the oda or company, the Vekil-karet, a sort of quarter-master, sees it regularly measured out, and if any portions be deficient, he takes note of the same, in order to have them replaced for the benefit of the company. The remainder is then given to the head cook, who divides it into two meals, one for eleven o’clock in the morning, and the other for seven in the evening. These two meals consist of boiled or stewed meat, mixed with rice, and seasoned with pepper and salt; water-gruel being regularly made for each man on Friday. There are six kitchen boys or quateri attached to each oda, by which they are paid a certain subsistence. On solemn occasions, and on festival days, the quateri are dre ed in long gowns made of skins, with borders to them; they likewise wear a large knife with an encrusted silver handle, which hangs at their side. They serve up the victuals in two copper ve els, that are laid upon a table covered with a skin, round which seven or eight persons may be seated.