Note 120 — 1800.

Some time before leaving the city, private Thomas Taylor, royal military artificers, was, without any provocation, assaulted by a Turk, who attempted to stab him with his yatikan. On a report of this outrage being made to the Capitan Pacha, to whose retinue the Turk belonged, he came to a resolution to have him decapitated. By the mediation and entreaties of Lord Elgin, a mitigation of the punishment ensued, and the Turk, after receiving fifty strokes of the bastinado on the soles of his feet, was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment in the college of Pera, to learn the Arabic language.—Dr. Wittman’s Turkey, p. 93.