An American Original.--Moral Changes in Turkey.--Wonders of Steam
Navigation.--The March of Mind.--Classic Localities.--Sestos and
Abydos.--Seeds of Pestilence.
ON my return from Ephesus I heard of the arrival in Smyrna of two
American travellers, father and son, from Egypt; and the same day, at
Mr. Langdon's, I met the father, Dr. N. of Mississippi. The doctor had
made a long and interesting tour in Egypt and the Holy Land,
interrupted, however, by a severe attack of ophthalmia on the Nile, from
which he had not yet recovered, and a narrow escape from the plague at
Cairo. He was about fifty-five, of a strong, active, and inquiring
mind; and the circumstances which had brought him to that distant
country were so peculiar, that I cannot help mentioning them. He had
passed all his life on the banks of the Mississippi, and for many years
had busied himself with speculations in regard to the creation of the
world. Year after year he had watched the deposites and the formation of
soil on the banks of the Mississippi, had visited every mound and
mountain indicating any peculiar geological formation, and, unable to
find any data to satisfy him, he started from his plantation directly
for the banks of the Nile. He possessed all the warm, high-toned
feelings of the Southerner, but a thorough contempt for the usages of
society and everything like polish of manners. He came to New-York and
embarked for Havre. He had never been even to New-York before; was
utterly ignorant of any language but his own; despised all foreigners,
and detested their "jabber." He worked his way to Marseilles with the
intention of embarking for Alexandria, but was taken sick, and retraced
his steps directly to his plantation on the Mississippi. Recovering, he
again set out for the Nile the next year, accompanied by his son, a
young man of about twenty-three, acquainted with foreign languages, and
competent to profit by foreign travel. This time he was more successful,
and, when I saw him, he had rambled over the Pyramids and explored the
ruined temples of Egypt. The result of his observations had been to
fortify his preconceived notions, that the age of this world far exceeds
six thousand years. Indeed, he was firmly persuaded that some of the
temples of the Nile were built more than six thousand years ago. He had
sent on to Smyrna enormous boxes of earth and stones, to be shipped to
America, and was particularly curious on the subject of trees, having
examined and satisfied himself as to the age of the olive-trees in the
Garden of Gethsemane and the cedars of Lebanon. I accompanied him to his
hotel, where I was introduced to his son; and I must not forget another
member of this party, who is, perhaps, already known to some of my
readers by the name of Paolo Nuozzo, or, more familiarly, Paul. This
worthy individual had been travelling on the Nile with two Hungarian
counts, who discharged him, or whom he discharged (for they differed as
to the fact), at Cairo. Dr. N. and his son were in want, and Paul
entered their service as dragoman and superintendent of another man,
who, they said, was worth a dozen of Paul. I have a very imperfect
recollection of my first interview with this original. Indeed, I hardly
remember him at all until my arrival at Constantinople, and have only an
indistinct impression of a dark, surly-looking, mustached man following
at the heels of Dr. N., and giving crusty answers in horrible English.
Before my visit to Ephesus I had talked with a Prussian baron of going
up by land to Constantinople; but on my return I found myself attacked
with a recurrence of an old malady, and determined to wait for the
steamboat. The day before I left Smyrna, accompanied by Mr. O. Langdon,
I went out to Boujac to dine with Mr. Styth. The great beauty of Smyrna
is its surrounding country. Within a few miles there are three villages,
Bournabat, Boujac, and Sediguey, occupied by Franks, of which Boujac is
the favourite. The Franks are always looking to the time of going out to
their country houses, and consider their residences in their villages
the most agreeable part of their year; and, from what I saw of it,
nothing can be more agreeable. Not more than half of them had yet moved
out, but after dinner we went round and visited all who were there.
They are all well acquainted, and, living in a strange and barbarous
country, are drawn closer together than they would be in their own.
Every evening there is a reunion at some of their houses, and there is
among them an absence of all unnecessary form and ceremony, without
which there can be no perfect enjoyment of the true pleasures of social
intercourse. These villages, too, are endeared to them as places of
refuge during the repeated and prolonged visitations of the plague, the
merchant going into the city every morning and returning at night, and
during the whole continuance of the disease avoiding to touch any member
of his family. The whole region of country around their villages is
beautiful in landscape and scenery, producing the choicest flowers and
fruits; the fig tree particularly growing with a luxuriance unknown in
any other part of the world. But the whole of this beautiful region lies
waste and uncultivated, although, if the government could be relied on,
holding out, by reason of its fertility, its climate, and its facility
of access, particularly now by means of steamboats, far greater
inducements to European emigration than any portion of our own country.
I will not impose upon the reader my speculations on this subject; my
notes are burdened with them; but, in my opinion, the Old World is in
process of regeneration, and at this moment offers greater opportunities
for enterprise than the New.
On Monday, accompanied by Dr. N. and his son and Paolo Nuozzo, I
embarked on board the steamboat Maria Dorothea for Constantinople; and
here follows another letter, and the last, dated from the capital of the
Eastern empire.
Constantinople, May ----, 1835.
MY DEAR ****,
Oh you who hope one day to roam in Eastern lands, to bend your
curious eyes upon the people warmed by the rising sun, come quickly,
for all things are changing. You who have pored over the story of
the Turk; who have dreamed of him as a gloomy enthusiast, hating,
spurning, and slaying all who do not believe and call upon the
Prophet;
"One of that saintly, murderous brood,
To carnage and the Koran given,
Who think through unbelievers' blood
Lies their directest path to Heaven;"
come quickly, for that description of Turk is passing away. The day
has gone by when the haughty Mussulman spurned and persecuted the
"Christian dog." A few years since it would have been at peril of a
man's life to appear in many parts of Turkey in a European dress;
but now the European is looked upon, not only as a creature fit to
live, but as a man to be respected. The sultan himself, the great
head of the nation and the religion, the vicegerent of God upon
earth, has taken off the turban, and all the officers of government
have followed his example. The army wears a bastard European
uniform, and the great study of the sultan is to introduce European
customs. Thanks to the infirmities of human nature, many of these
customs have begun to insinuate themselves. The pious follower of
the Prophet has dared to raise the winecup to his lips; and in many
instances, at the peril of losing his paradise of houris, has given
himself up to strong drink. Time was when the word of a Turk was
sacred as a precept of the Koran; now he can no more be relied upon
than a Jew or a Christian. He has fallen with great facility into
lying, cheating, and drinking, and if the earnest efforts to change
him are attended with success, perhaps we may soon add stealing and
having but one wife. And all this change, this mighty fall, is
ascribed by the Europeans here to the destruction of the janisaries,
a band of men dangerous to government, brave, turbulent, and bloody,
but of indomitable pride; who were above doing little things, and
who gave a high tone to the character of the whole people. If I was
not bent upon a gallop, and could stop for the jogtrot of an
argument, I would say that the destruction of the janisaries is a
mere incidental circumstance, and that the true cause is--_steam
navigation_. Do not laugh, but listen. The Turks have ever been a
proud people, possessing a sort of peacock pride, an extravagantly
good opinion of themselves, and a superlative contempt for all the
rest of the world. Heretofore they have had comparatively little
intercourse with Europeans, consequently but little opportunity of
making comparisons, and consequently, again, but little means of
discovering their own inferiority. But lately things have changed;
the universal peace in Europe and the introduction of steamboats
into the Mediterranean have brought the Europeans and the Turks
comparatively close together. It seems to me that the effect of
steamboats here has as yet hardly begun to be felt. There are but
few of them, indifferent boats, constantly getting out of order, and
running so irregularly that no reliance can be placed upon them. But
still their effects are felt, their convenience is acknowledged;
and, so far as my knowledge extends, they have never been introduced
anywhere yet without multiplying in numbers, and driving all other
vessels off the water. Now the Mediterranean is admirably suited to
the use of steamboats; indeed, the whole of these inland waters,
the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, the Archipelago, the Dardanelles,
the Sea of Marmora, the Bosphorus, and the Black Sea, from the
Straits of Gibraltar to the Sea of Azoff, offer every facility that
can be desired for steam navigation; and when we consider that the
most interesting cities in the world are on the shores of these
waters, I cannot but believe that in a very few years they will be,
to a certain extent, covered with steamboats. At all events, I have
no doubt that in two or three years you will be able to go from
Paris to Constantinople in fifteen or twenty days; and, when that
time comes, it will throw such numbers of Europeans into the East as
will have a sensible effect upon the manners and customs of the
people. These eastern countries will be invaded by all classes of
people, travellers, merchants, and mechanics, gentlemen of elegant
leisure, and blacksmiths, shoemakers, tinkers, and tailors, nay,
even mantuamakers, milliners, and bandboxes, the last being an
incident to civilized life as yet unknown in Turkey. Indeed,
wonderful as the effects of steamboats have been under our own eyes,
we are yet to see them far more wonderful in bringing into close
alliance, commercial and social, people from distant countries, of
different languages and habits; in removing national prejudices, and
in breaking down the great characteristic distinctions of nations.
Nous verrons, twenty years hence, what steamboats will have done in
this part of the world!
But, in standing up for steamboats, I must not fail in doing justice
to the grand seignior. His highness has not always slept upon a bed
of roses. He had to thank the petticoats of a female slave for
saving his life when a boy, and he had hardly got upon his throne
before he found that he should have a hard task to keep it. It lay
between him and the janisaries. In spite of them and of the general
prejudices of the people, he determined to organize an army
according to European tactics. He staked his throne and his head
upon the issue; and it was not until he had been pushed to the
desperate expedient of unfurling the sacred standard of the Prophet,
parading it through the streets of Constantinople, and calling upon
all good Mussulmans to rally round it; in short, it was not until
the dead bodies of thirty thousand janisaries were floating down the
Bosphorus, that he found himself the master in his own dominions.
Since that time, either because he is fond of new things, or because
he really sees farther than those around him, he is constantly
endeavouring to introduce European improvements. For this purpose he
invites talent, particularly mechanical and military, from every
country, and has now around him Europeans among his most prominent
men, and directing nearly all his public works.
The Turks are a sufficiently intelligent people, and cannot help
feeling the superiority of strangers. Probably the immediate effect
may be to make them prone rather to catch the faults and vices than
the virtues of Europeans; but afterward better things will come;
they will fall into our better ways; and perhaps, though that is
almost more than we dare hope for, they will embrace a better
religion.
But, however this may be, or whatever may be the cause, all ye who
would see the Turk of Mohammed; the Turk who swept the plains of
Asia, who leaned upon his bloody sword before the walls of Vienna,
and threatened the destruction of Christendom in Europe; the Turk of
the turban, and the pipe, and the seraglio, come quickly, for he is
becoming another man. A little longer, and the great characteristic
distinctions will be broken down; the long pipe, the handsome
pipe-bearer, and the amber mouthpiece are gone, and oh, death to all
that is beautiful in Eastern romance, the walls of the seraglio are
prostrated, the doors of the harem thrown open, the black eunuch and
the veiled woman are no more seen, while the honest Turk trudges
home from a quiet tea-party stripped of his retinue of fair ones,
with his one and only wife tucked under his arm, his head drooping
between his shoulders, taking a lecture from his better half for an
involuntary sigh to the good old days that are gone. And oh you who
turn up your aristocratic noses at such parvenues as Mohammed and
the Turks; who would go back to those distant ages which time covers
with its dim and twilight glories,
"When the world was fresh and young,
And the great deluge still had left it green;"
you who come piping-hot from college, your brains teeming with
recollections of the heroic ages; who would climb Mount Ida, to sit
in council with the gods, come quickly, also, for all things are
changing. A steamboat--shade of Hector, Ajax, and Agamemnon, forgive
the sins of the day--an Austrian steamboat is now splashing the
island-studded AEgean, and paddling the classic waters of the
Hellespont. Oh ye princes and heroes who armed for the Trojan war,
and covered these waters with your thousand ships, with what pious
horror must you look down from your blessed abodes upon the impious
modern monster of the deep, which strips the tall mast of its
flowing canvass, renders unnecessary the propitiation of the gods,
and flounders on its way in spite of wind and weather!
A new and unaccountable respect for the classics almost made me
scorn the newfangled conveyance, though much to the comfort of
wayfaring men; but sundry recollections of Greek caiques, and also
an apprehension that there might be those yet living who had heard
me in early days speak anything but respectfully of Homer, suggested
to me that one man could not stem the current of the times, and that
it was better for a humble individual like myself to float with the
tide. This idea, too, of currents and tides made me think better of
Prince Metternich and his steamboat; and smothering, as well as I
could, my sense of shame, I sneaked on board the Maria Dorothea for
a race to Constantinople. Join me, now, in this race; and if your
heart does not break at going by at the rate of eight or ten miles
an hour, I will whip you over a piece of the most classic ground
consecrated in history, mythology, or poetry, and in less time than
ever the swiftfooted Achilles could have travelled it. At eleven
o'clock on a bright sunny day the Maria Dorothea turned her back
upon the city and beautiful bay of Smyrna; in about two hours passed
the harbour of Vourla, then used as a quarantine station, the yellow
plague flag floating in the city and among the shipping; and toward
dark, turning the point of the gulf, came upon my old acquaintance
Foggi, the little harbour into which I had been twice driven by
adverse winds. My Greek friend happened to be on board, and, in the
honesty of his heart, congratulated me upon being this time
independent of the elements, without seeming to care a fig whether
he profaned the memory of his ancestors in travelling by so
unclassical a conveyance. If he takes it so coolly, thought I, what
is it to me? they are his relations, not mine. In the evening we
were moving close to the Island of Mytilene, the ancient Lesbos, the
country of Sappho, Alcaeus, and Terpander, famed for the excellence
of its wine and the beauty of its women, and pre-eminently
distinguished for dissipation and debauchery, the fatal plague flag
now floating mournfully over its walls, marking it as the abode of
pestilence and death.
Early in the morning I found myself opposite the promontory of
Lectum, now Cape Baba, separating the ancient Troas from AEolia; a
little to the right, but hardly visible, were the ruins of Assos,
where the apostles stopped to take in Paul; a little farther the
ruins of Alexandria Troas, one of the many cities founded by
Alexander during his conquests in Asia; to the left, at some
distance in the sea, is the Island of Lemnos, in the songs of the
poets overshadowed by the lofty Olympus, the island that received
Vulcan after he was kicked out of heaven by Jupiter. A little
farther, nearer the land, is the Island of Tenedos, the ancient
Leucophrys, where Paris first landed after carrying off Helen, and
behind which the Greeks withdrew their fleet when they pretended to
have abandoned the siege of Troy. Still farther, on the mainland, is
the promontory of Sigaeum, where the Scamander empties into the sea,
and near which were fought the principal of Homer's battles. A
little farther--but hold, stop the engine! If there be a spot of
classic ground on earth in which the historical, and the poetical,
and the fabulous are so beautifully blended together that we would
not separate them even to discover the truth, it is before us now.
Extending for a great distance along the shore, and back as far as
the eye can reach, under the purest sky that ever overshadowed the
earth, lies a rich and beautiful plain, and it is the plain of Troy,
the battle-ground of heroes. Oh field of glory and of blood, little
does he know, that surly Turk who is now lazily following his plough
over thy surface, that every blade of thy grass could tell of
heroic deeds, the shock of armies, the meeting of war chariots, the
crashing of armour, the swift flight, the hot pursuit, the shouts of
victors, and the groans of the dying. Beyond it, towering to the
heavens, is a lofty mountain, and it is Mount Ida, on whose top
Paris adjudged the golden apple to the goddess of beauty, and paved
the way for those calamities which brought on the ten years' siege,
and laid in ruins the ancient city of Priam. Two small streams,
taking their rise from the mountain of the gods, join each other in
the middle of the plain; Scamander and Simois, whose waters once
washed the walls of the ancient city of Dardanus; and that small,
confused, and shapeless mass of ruins, that beautiful sky and the
songs of Homer, are all that remain to tell us that "Troy was."
Close to the sea, and rising like mountains above the plain, are two
immense mounds of earth; they are the tombs of Ajax and Achilles.
Shades of departed heroes, fain would we stop and pay the tribute
which we justly owe, but we are hurried past by an engine of a
hundred horse power.
Onward, still onward! We have reached the ancient Hellespont, the
Dardanelles of the Turks, famed as the narrow water that divides
Europe from Asia, for the beauties that adorn its banks, and for its
great Turkish fortifications. Three miles wide at the mouth, it
becomes gradually narrower, until, in the narrowest part, the
natives of Europe and Asia can talk together from the opposite
sides. For sixty miles (its whole length) it presents a continued
succession of new beauties, and in the hands of Europeans,
particularly English, improved as country seats, would make one of
the loveliest countries in the world. I had just time to reflect
that it was melancholy, and seemed inexplicable that this and other
of the fairest portions of the earth should be in the hands of the
Turks, who neither improve it themselves nor allow others to do so.
At three o'clock we arrived at the Dardanelles, a little Turkish
town in the narrowest and most beautiful part of the straits; a
strong fort with enormous cannon stands frowning on each side. These
are the terrible fortifications of Mohammed II., the keys of
Constantinople. The guns are enormous; of one in particular, the
muzzle is two feet three inches in diameter; but, with Turkish
ingenuity, they are so placed as to be discharged when a ship is
directly opposite. If the ship is not disabled by the first fire,
and does not choose to go back and take another, she is safe. At
every moment a new picture presents itself; a new fort, a new villa,
or the ruins of an ancient city. A naked point on the European side,
so ugly compared with all around it as to attract particular
attention, projects into the strait, and here are the ruins of
Sestos; here Xerxes built his bridge of boats to carry over his
millions to the conquest of Greece; and here, when he returned with
the wreck of his army, defeated and disgraced, found his bridge
destroyed by a tempest, and, in his rage, ordered the chains to be
thrown into the sea and the waves to be lashed with rods. From this
point, too, Leander swam the Hellespont for love of Hero, and Lord
Byron and Mr. Ekenhead for fun. Nearly opposite, close to a Turkish
fort, are the ruins of Abydos. Here Xerxes, and Leander, and Lord
Byron, and Mr. Ekenhead landed.
Our voyage is drawing to a close. At Gallipoli, a large Turkish town
handsomely situated at the mouth of the Dardanelles, we took on
board the Turkish governor, with his pipe-bearer and train of
attendants, escorted by thirty or forty boats, containing three or
four hundred people, his mightiness taking a deck passage. Toward
evening we were entering the Sea of Marmora, the ancient Propontis,
like one of our small lakes, and I again went to sleep lulled by the
music of a high-pressure engine. At daylight we were approaching
Constantinople; twelve miles this side, on the bank of the Sea of
Marmora, is the village of St. Stephano, the residence of Commodore
Porter. Here the domes and minarets of the ancient city, with their
golden points and glittering crescents, began to appear in sight.
High above the rest towered the mosque of Sultan Achmet and the
beautiful dome of St. Sophia, the ancient Christian church, but now,
for nearly four hundred years, closed against the Christians' feet.
We approach the walls and pass a range of gloomy turrets; there are
the Seven Towers, prisons, portals of the grave, whose mysteries few
live to publish: the bowstring and the sea reveal no secrets. That
palace, with its blinded windows and its superb garden, surrounded
by a triple range of walls, is the far-famed seraglio; there beauty
lingers in a splendid cage, and, lolling on her rich divan, sighs
for the humblest lot and freedom. In front, that narrow water, a
thousand caiques shooting through it like arrows, and its beautiful
banks covered with high palaces and gardens in the oriental style,
is the Thracian Bosphorus. We float around the walls of the
seraglio, enter the Golden Horn, and before us, with its thousand
mosques and its myriad of minarets, their golden points glittering
in the sun, is the Roman city of Constantinople, the Thracian
Byzantium, the Stamboul of the Turks; the city which, more than all
others, excites the imagination and interests the feelings; once
dividing with Rome the empire of the world; built by a Christian
emperor and consecrated as a Christian city, a "burning and a
shining light" in a season of universal darkness, all at once lost
to the civilized world; falling into the hands of a strange and
fanatic people, the gloomy followers of a successful soldier; a city
which, for nearly four centuries, has sat with its gates closed in
sullen distrust and haughty defiance of strangers; which once sent
forth large and terrible armies, burning, slaying, and destroying,
shaking the hearts of princes and people, now lying like a fallen
giant, huge, unwieldy, and helpless, ready to fall into the hands of
the first invader, and dragging out a precarious and ignoble
existence but by the mercy or policy of the great Christian powers.
The morning sun, now striking upon its domes and minarets, covers
it, as it were, with burnished gold; a beautiful verdure surrounds
it, and pure waters wash it on every side. Can this beautiful city,
rich with the choicest gifts of Heaven, be pre-eminently the abode
of pestilence and death? where a man carries about with him the
seeds of disease to all whom he holds dear? if he extend the hand of
welcome to a friend, if he embrace his child or rub against a
stranger, the friend, and the child, and the stranger follow him to
the grave? where, year after year, the angel of death stalks through
the streets, and thousands and tens of thousands look him calmly in
the face, and murmuring "Allah, Allah, God is merciful," with a
fatal trust in the Prophet, lie down and die? We enter the city, and
these questions are quickly answered. A lazy, lounging, and filthy
population; beggars basking in the sun, and dogs licking their
sores; streets never cleaned but by the winds and rains; immense
burying-grounds all over the city; tombstones at the corners of the
streets; graves gaping ready to throw out their half-buried dead,
the whole approaching to one vast charnel-house, dispel all
illusions and remove all doubts, and we are ready to ask ourselves
if it be possible that, in such a place, health can ever dwell. We
wonder that it should ever, for the briefest moment, be free from
that dreadful scourge which comes with every summer's sun and strews
its streets with dead.
****