Alexandria Gazette

SINGULAR SYSTEM OF DUELLING.—On the borders of Austria and Turkey, where a private pique or a private quarrel of a single individual might occasion the massacre of a family or village, the desolation of a province, and perhaps the more extended horrors of a national war, whenever any serious dispute arises between two subjects of the different empires, recourse is had to terminate it to what is called "the custom of the frontier." A spacious plain or field is selected, whither, on an appointed day, judges of the respective nations repair, accompanied by all those whom curiosity or interest may assemble. The combatants are not restricted in the choice or number of their arms, or in their method of fighting, but each is at liberty to employ whatever he conceives to be most advantageous to himself, and avail himself of every artifice to ensure his own safety, and destroy the life of his antagonist. One of the last times that this method of deciding a quarrel on the frontier was resorted to, the circumstances were sufficiently curious, and the recital of them may serve to illustrate what is mentioned.

A phlegmatic German, armed with the most desperate weapon in the world—a rifle pistol mounted on a carbine stock, placed himself in the middle of the field; conscious that he would infallibly destroy his enemy, if he could once get him within shot, began coolly to smoke his pipe. The Turk, on the contrary, with a pistol on one side and a pistol on the other, and two or three more at his breast, and a carbine on his back, and a sabre by his side, and a dagger in his belt, advanced like a moving magazine, and galloping round his adversary, kept incessantly firing at him. The German, conscious that little or no danger was to be apprehended from such firing at him, conscious that little as a marksman with such weapons, deliberately continued to smoke his pipe. The Turk at length perceiving a sort of little explosion, as if his antagonist's pistol missed fire, advanced like lightning to cut him down and was immediately shot dead. The wily German had put some gunpowder into his pipe, the light of which his enemy mistook, as the other had foreseen would be the case, for a flash in the pan, and no longer fearing the superior skill and superior arms of his adversary, fell a victim to them both when seconded by artifice.