Feeling thus “airy and meet for intercourse with the stars,” one could
not do better than ascend to the top of that stone Titan called the
Serasker Tower. I think that should Satan again undertake to offer a
view of the kingdoms of the world by way of a temptation, his best
course would be to select this spot for the enterprise. The tower,
built in the reign of Mahmûd II., is planted upon the summit of the
most lofty hill in Stambul, on that spot in the centre of the vast
courtyard of the War Office called by the Turks the _umbilicus_ of
the city. It is constructed mainly of white Marmora marble, on the
plan of a regular polygon with sixteen sides, and rears itself aloft,
erect, and graceful as a column, overtopping to a considerable extent
the gigantic minarets of the adjacent mosque of Suleiman. Ascending
a winding stair lighted here and there by square windows, you catch
fleeting views now of Galata, now of Stambul or the villages on the
Golden Horn, and before you are halfway to the top seem already to have
reached the region of the clouds. It may happen that a slight noise
is heard directly over your head, and almost at the same instant a
something flashes by, apparently an object of some sort being hurled
headlong from above; but, in reality, one of the guards stationed
day and night on the summit to watch for fires and give the alarm,
who, having discovered at some distant point of the horizon a
cloud of suspicious-looking smoke, is taking word to the seraskier.
After mounting about two hundred steps you reach a sort of covered
terrace running all around the tower and enclosed with glass, where an
attendant is always at hand to serve visitors with coffee. On first
finding yourself in that transparent cage, suspended as it were between
heaven and earth, with nothing to be seen but an immense blue space,
and the wind howling and rattling the panes of glass and making the
boards strain and creak, you are very apt to be attacked with vertigo
and to feel strongly tempted to give up the view; but at sight of the
ladder which leads to the window in the roof courage returns, and,
climbing up with a beating heart, a cry of astonishment escapes you. It
is an overpowering moment, and for a little while you remain silent and
transfixed.
[Illustration: Entrance and Tower of Seraskier.]
Constantinople lies spread out before you like a map, and with the
turn of an eye the entire extent of the mighty metropolis can be
embraced--all the hills and valleys of Stambul from the Castle of the
Seven Towers to the cemetery of Eyûb; all Galata, all Pera, as though
you could drop your sight down into them like a plumb-line; all Skutari
as though it lay directly beneath you--three lines of buildings,
groves, and shipping, extending as far as the eye can reach along
three shores of indescribable beauty, and other stretches of garden
and village winding away inland until they fade out of view in the
distance; the entire length of the Golden Horn, smooth and glassy,
dotted over with innumerable käiks, which look like bright-colored
flies swimming about on the surface of the water; all of the Bosphorus
too, but, owing to the hills which run out into it here and there, it
looks like a series of lakes, and each lake seems to be surrounded
by a city, and each city festooned about with gardens: beyond the
Bosphorus lies the Black Sea, whose blue surface melts into the
sky; in the opposite direction are the Sea of Marmora, the Gulf of
Nicomedia [Ismid], the Isles of the Princes, and the two coasts of
Asia and Europe, white with villages; beyond the Sea of Marmora lie
the Dardanelles, shining like a silver ribbon, and beyond them again a
dazzling white light indicates the Ægean Sea, with a dark line showing
the position of the Troad; beyond Skutari are seen Bithynia and the
Olympus; beyond Stambul the brown undulating solitudes of Thrace;
two gulfs, two straits, two continents, three seas, twenty cities,
myriads of silver cupolas with gilded pinnacles, a glory of light, an
exuberance of color, until you doubt whether it is indeed your own
planet spread out before you or some other heavenly body more highly
favored by God.