“Looked o’er my almanac
And crossed out my ill-days,”
suffered a week or so to escape him here. Not that the ship is not
pleasant enough, and the climate deserving of its Sybarite fame, and the
sunsets and stars as much brighter than those of the rest of the world,
as Byron has described them to be (_vide_ letter to Leigh Hunt), but
life has run in so deep a current with me of late, that the absence of
incident seems like water without wine. The agreeable stir of travel,
the incomplete adventure, the change of costumes and scenery, the busy
calls upon the curiosity and the imagination, have become, in a manner,
very breath to me. Hitherto upon the cruise, we have scarce ever been
more than one or two days at a time out of port. Elba, Sicily, Naples,
Vienna, the Ionian Isles, and the various ports of Greece have come and
gone so rapidly, and so entirely without exertion of my own, that I seem
to have lived in a magic panorama. After dinner on one day I visit a
city here, and the day or two after, lounging and reading and sleeping
meanwhile quietly at home, I find myself rising from table, hundreds of
miles farther to the north or east, and another famous city before me,
having taken no care, and felt no motion, nor encountered danger or
fatigue. A summer cruise in the Mediterranean is certainly the
perfection of sight-seeing. With a sea as smooth as a river, and cities
of interest, classical and mercantile, everywhere on the lee, I can
conceive of no class of persons to whom it would not be delightful. A
company of pleasure, in a private vessel, would see all Greece and Italy
with less trouble and expense than is common on a trip to the lakes.
* * * * *
“All hands up anchor!” The dog-vane points at last to Constantinople.
The capstan is manned, the sails loosed, the quarter-master at the
wheel, and the wind freshens every moment from the “sweet south.” “Heave
round merrily!” The anchor is dragged in by this rushing Hellespont, and
holds on as if the bridge of Xerxes were tangled about the flukes. “Up
she comes at last,” and, yielding to her broad canvass, the gallant
frigate begins to make headway against the current. There is nothing in
the whole world of senseless matter, so like a breathing creature as a
ship! The energy of her motion, the beauty of her shape and contrivance,
and the ease with which she is managed by the one mind upon her
quarter-deck, to whose voice she is as obedient as the courser to the
rein, inspire me with daily admiration. I have been four months a guest
in this noble man-of-war, and to this hour, I never set my foot on her
deck without a feeling of fresh wonder. And then Cooper’s novels read in
a ward-room as grapes eat in Tuscany. It were missing one of the golden
leaves of a life not to have thumbed them on a cruise.
The wind has headed us off again, and we have dropped anchor just below
the castles of the Dardanelles. We have made but eight miles, but we
have new scenery from the ports, and that is something to a weary eye. I
was as tired of “the shores of Ilion” as ever was Ulysses. The hills
about our present anchorage are green and boldly marked, and the
frowning castles above us give that addition to the landscape which is
alone wanting on the Hudson. Sestos and Abydos are six or seven miles up
the stream. The Asian shore (I should have thought it a pretty
circumstance, once, to be able to set foot either in Europe or Asia in
five minutes) is enlivened by numbers of small vessels, tracking up with
buffaloes, against wind and tide. And here we lie, says the old pilot,
without hope till the moon changes. The “_fickle_ moon,” quotha! I wish
my friends were half as constant!
The Pacha of the Dardanelles has honoured us with a visit. He came in a
long caique, pulled by twenty stout rascals, his Excellency of “two
tails” sitting on a rich carpet on the bottom of the boat, with his boy
of a year old in the same uniform as himself, and his suite of pipe and
slipper-bearers, dwarf and executioner, sitting cross-legged about him.
He was received with the guard and all the honour due to his rank. His
face is that of a cold, haughty, and resolute, but well-born man, and
his son is like him. He looked at everything attentively, without
expressing any surprise, till he came to the pianoforte, which one of
the ladies played to his undisguised delight. It was the first he had
ever seen. He inquired, through his interpreter, if she had not been all
her life in learning.
* * * * *
The poet says, “The seasons of the year come in like masquers.” To one
who had made their acquaintance in New-England, most of the months would
literally pass _incog._ in Italy. But here is honest October, the same
merry old gentleman, though I meet him in Asia, and I remember him, last
year, at the baths of Lucca, as unchanged as here. It has been a clear,
bright, invigorating day, with a vitality in the air as rousing to the
spirits as a blast from the “horn of Astolpho.” I can remember just such
a day ten years ago. It is odd how a little sunshine will cling to the
memory when loves and hates that, in their time, convulsed the very
soul, are so easily forgotten.
We heard yesterday that there was a Turkish village seven or eight miles
in the mountains on the Asian side, and, as a variety to the promenade
on the quarter-deck, a ramble was proposed to it.
We landed, this morning, on the bold shore of the Dardanelles, and,
climbing up the face of a sand-hill, struck across a broad plain,
through bush and brier, for a mile. On the edge of a ravine we found a
pretty road, half-hedged over with oak and hemlock, and a mounted Turk,
whom we met soon after, with a gun across his pummel, and a goose
looking from his saddle-bag, directed us to follow it till we reached
the village.
It was a beautiful path, flecked with the shade of leaves of all the
variety of eastern trees, and refreshed with a fountain at every mile.
About half way we stopped at a spring welling from a rock, under a large
fig-tree, from which the water poured, as clear as crystal, into seven
tanks, and one after the other rippling away from the last into a wild
thicket, whence a stripe of brighter green marked its course down the
mountain. It was a spot worthy of Tempé. We seated ourselves on the rim
of the rocky basin, and, with a drink of bright water, and a half hour’s
repose, re-commenced our ascent, blessing the nymph of the fount, like
true pilgrims of the East.
A few steps beyond we met a caravan of the pacha’s tithe-gatherers, with
mules laden with grapes; the turbaned and showily-armed drivers, as they
came winding down the dell, produced the picturesque effect of a
theatrical ballet. They laid their hands on their breasts, with grave
courtesy, as they approached, and we helped ourselves to the ripe,
blushing clusters, as the panniers went by, with Arcadian freedom.
We reached the summit of the ridge a little before noon, and turned our
faces back for a moment to catch the cool wind from the Hellespont. The
Dardanelles came winding out from the hills, just above Abydos, and
sweeping past the upper castles of Europe and Asia, rushed down by
Tenedos into the Archipelago. Perhaps twenty miles of its course lay
within our view. Its colours were borrowed from the divine sky above,
and the rainbow is scarce more varied or brighter. The changing purple
and blue of the mid-stream, specked with white crests, the chrysoprase
green of the shallows, and the dyes of the various depths along the
shore, gave it the appearance of a vein of transparent marble, inlaid
through the valley. The frigate looked like a child’s boat on its bosom.
To our left, the tombs of Ajax and Achilles were just distinguishable in
the plains of the Scamander, and Troy (if Troy ever stood) stood back
from the sea, and the blue-wreathed isles of the Archipelago bounded the
reach of the eye. It was a view that might “cure a month’s grief in a
day.”
We descended now into a kind of cradle valley, yellow with rich
vineyards. It was alive with people gathering in the grapes. The
creaking wagons filled the road, and shouts and laughter rang over the
mountain-sides merrily. The scene would have been Italian, but for the
turbans peering out everywhere from the leaves, and those
diabolical-looking buffaloes in the wagons. The village was a mile or
two before us, and we loitered on, entering here and there a vineyard,
where the only thing evidently grudged us was our peep at the women.
They scattered like deer as we stepped over the walls.
Near the village we found a grave Turk, of whom one of the officers made
some inquiries, which were a part of our errand to the mountains. It may
spoil the sentiment of my description, but, in addition to the poetry of
the ramble, we were to purchase beef for the mess. His bullocks were out
at grass (feeding in pastoral security, poor things!), and he invited us
to his house, while he sent his boy to drive them in. I recognised them,
when they came, as two handsome steers, which had completed the beauty
of an open glade, in the centre of a clump of forest trees, on our
route. The pleasure they have afforded to the eye will be repeated upon
the palate—a double destiny not accorded to all beautiful creatures.
Our host led us up a flight of rough stone steps to the second story of
his house, where an old woman sat upon her heels, rolling out paste, and
a younger one nursed a little Turk at her bosom. They had, like every
man, woman, or child I have seen in this country, superb eyes and noses.
No chisel could improve the meanest of them in these features. Our
friend’s wife seemed ashamed to be caught with her face uncovered, but
she offered us cushions on the floor before she retired, and her husband
followed up her courtesy with his pipe.
We went thence to the café, where a bubbling hookah, a cup of coffee,
and a divan, refreshed us a little from our fatigues. While the rest of
the party were lingering over their pipes, I took a turn through the
village in search of the house of the Aga. After strolling up and down
the crooked streets for half an hour, a pretty female figure, closely
enveloped in her veil, and showing, as she ran across the street, a
dainty pair of feet in small yellow slippers, attracted me into the open
court of the best-looking house in the village. The lady had
disappeared, but a curious-looking carriage, lined with rich Turkey
carpeting and cushions, and covered with red curtains, made to draw
close in front, stood in the centre of the court. I was going up to
examine it, when an old man, with a beard to his girdle, and an
uncommonly rich turban, stepped from the house and motioned me angrily
away. A large wolf-dog, which he held by the collar, added emphasis to
his command, and I retreated directly. A giggle and several female
voices from the closely-latticed window, rather aggravated the
mortification. I had intruded on the premises of the Aga, a high offence
in Turkey, when a woman is in the case.
It was “deep i’ the afternoon,” when we arrived at the beach, and made
signal for a boat. We were on board as the sky kindled with the warm
colours of an Asian sunset—a daily offset to our wearisome detention
which goes far to keep me in temper. My fear is that the commodore’s
patience is not “so good a continuer” as this “vento maledetto,” as the
pilot calls it, and in such a case I lose Constantinople most
provokingly.
Walked to the Upper Castle Asia, some eight miles above our anchorage.
This is the main town on the Dardanelles, and contains forty or fifty
thousand inhabitants. Sestos and Abydos are a mile or two farther up the
Strait.
We kept along the beach for an hour or two, passing occasionally a Turk
on horseback, till we were stopped by a small and shallow creek without
a bridge, just on the skirts of the town. A woman with one eye peeping
from her veil, dressed in a tunic of fine blue cloth, stood at the head
of a large drove of camels on the other side, and a beggar with one eye,
smoked his pipe on the sand at a little distance. The water was
knee-deep, and we were hesitating on the brink, when the beggar offered
to carry us across on his back—a task he accomplished (there were six
of us) without taking his pipe from his mouth.
I tried in vain to get a peep at the camel-driver’s wife or daughter,
but she seemed jealous of showing even her eyebrow, and I followed on to
the town. The Turks live differently from every other people, I believe.
You walk through their town and see every individual in it, except
perhaps the women of the pacha. Their houses are square boxes, the front
side of which lifts on a hinge in the day-time, exposing the whole
interior, with its occupants squatted in the corners or on the broad
platform where their trades are followed. They are scarce larger than
boxes in the theatre, and the roof projects into the middle of the
street, meeting that of the opposite neighbour, so that the pavement
between is always dark and cool. The three or four Turkish towns I have
seen, have the appearance of cabins thrown up hastily after a fire. You
would not suppose they were intended to last more than a month at the
farthest.
We roved through the narrow streets an hour or more, admiring the fine
bearded old Turks, smoking cross-legged in the cafés, the slipper-makers
with their gay morocco wares in goodly rows around them, the wily Jews
with their high caps and caftans (looking, crouched among their
merchandise, like the “venders of old bottles and abominable lies,” as
they are drawn in the plays of Queen Elizabeth’s time), the muffled and
gliding spectres of the Moslem women, and the livelier-footed Greek
girls, in their velvet jackets and braided hair, and by this time we
were kindly disposed to our dinners.
On our way to the consul’s, where we were to dine, we passed a mosque.
The minaret (a tall peaked tower, about of the shape and proportions of
a pencil-case) commanded a view down the principal streets; and a stout
fellow, with a sharp clear voice, leaned over the balustrade at the top,
crying out the invitation to prayer in a long drawling sing-song, that
must have been audible on the other side of the Hellespont. Open
porches, supported by a paling, extended all around the church, and the
floors were filled with kneeling Turks, with their pistols and ataghans
lying beside them. I had never seen so picturesque a congregation. The
slippers were left in hundreds at the threshold, and the bare and
muscular feet and legs, half concealed by the full trowsers, supported
as earnest a troop of worshippers as ever bent forehead to the ground. I
left them rising from a flat prostration, and hurried after my
companions to dinner.
Our consul of the Dardanelles is an American. He is absent just now, in
search of a runaway female slave of the sultan’s; and his wife, a
gracious Italian, full of movement and hospitality, does the honours of
his house in his absence. He is a physician as well as consul and
slave-catcher, and the presents of a hand-organ, a French clock, and a
bronze standish, rather prove him to be a favourite with the “brother of
the sun.”
We were smoking the hookah after dinner, when an intelligent-looking
man, of fifty or so, came in to pay us a visit. He is at present an
exile from Constantinople, by order of the Grand Seignior, because a
brother physician, his friend, failed in an attempt to cure one of the
favourites of the imperial harem! This is what might be called “sympathy
upon compulsion.” It is unnecessary, one would think, to make friendship
more dangerous than common human treachery renders it already.
* * * * *
* * * * *