Gallipoli—Aristocracy of Beards—Turkish Shopkeepers—The
Hospitable Jew and his lovely Daughter—Unexpected
Rencontre—Constantinople—The Bosphorus, the Seraglio, and the
Golden Horn.
What an image of life it is! The good ship dashes bravely on her
course—the spray flies from her prow—her sheets are steady and
full—to look up to her spreading canvass, and feel her springing away
beneath, you would not give her “for the best horse the sun has in his
stable.” The next moment, hey! the foresail is aback! the wind baffles
and dies, the ripples sink from the sea, the ship loses her “way,” and
the pennant drops to the mast in a breathless calm! “Clear away the
anchor!” and here we are till this “crab in the ascendant” that makes
“all our affairs go backwards,” yields to our better stars.
We went ashore to take a stroll through the streets of Gallipoli (the
ancient Gallipoli of Thrace) as a sop to our patience. A deeply-laden
Spanish merchant lay off the pier, with a crew of red-capped and
olive-complexioned fellows taking in grain from a Turkish caique, and a
crowd of modern Thracians, in the noble costumes and flowing beards of
the country, closed around us as we stepped from the boat.
A street of cafés led from the end of the pier, and as usual, they were
all crowded with Turks, leaning forward over their slippers, and
crossing their long chibouques as they conversed together. It is odd
that even the habit of a life can make their painful and unnatural
posture an agreeable one. Yet they will sit with their legs crooked
under them, in a way that strains the unaccustomed knee till it cracks
again, motionless by the hour together.
I had no idea till I came to Turkey how rare a beauty is a handsome
beard. Here no man shaves, and there is as great a difference in beards
as in stature. The men of rank that we have seen, might have been picked
out anywhere by their superior beauty in this respect. It grows vilely,
it seems to me, on scoundrels. The beggars ashore, the low Jews who
board us with provisions, the greater part of the soldiers and petty
shop-keepers of the towns, have all some mark in their beards, that
nature never intended them for gentlemen. Your smooth chin is a great
leveller, trust me!
These Turkish towns have a queer look altogether. Gallipoli is so seldom
touched by a Christian foot, that it preserves all its peculiarities
entire, and is likely to do so for the next century. We walked on,
ascending a narrow street completely shut in by the roofs of the low
houses meeting above. There are no carriages or carts, and the Turks
glide over the stones in their loose slippers with an indolent shuffle
that seems rather to add to the silence. You hear no voice, for they
seldom speak, and never above the key of a bassoon; and what with the
odd costumes, long beards, grave faces, and twilight darkness all about
you, it is like a scene on the stage when the lights are lowered in some
incantation scene.
Each street is devoted to some one trade. We first got among the
grocers. Every shop was a fellow to the other, containing an old Turk,
squatted among soap, jars of oil, raisins, olives, pickled fish, and
sweetmeats, and everything within his reach. He would sell you his whole
stock in trade without taking his pipe from his mouth, or disturbing his
yellow slipper.
The next turn brought us into the Jews’ quarter. They were all tailors,
and their shops were as dark as Erebus. The light crept through the
chinks in the roof, falling invariably on the same aquiline nose and
ragged beard, with now and then a pair of copper spectacles, while in
the back of the dim tenement sat an old woman with a group of handsome
little Hebrews, (they are always handsome when very young, with their
clear skins and dark eyes) the whole family stitching away most
diligently. It was laughable to see how every shop in the street
presented the same picture.
We then got among the slipper-makers, and vile work they turned out. We
were hesitating between two turnings when an old Jew, with a high
lamb’s-wool cap and long black caftan, rather shabby for wear, addressed
me in a sort of _lingua Franca_, half Italian, half French, with a
sprinkling of Spanish, and inquiring whether I belonged to the frigate
in the harbour, offered to supply us with provisions, &c. &c. I declined
his services, and he asked us directly to his house to take coffee—as
plump a _non sequitur_ as I have met in my travels.
We followed the old man to a very secluded part of the town, stopping a
moment by the way to look at the remains of an old fort built by the
Genoese in the stout times of Andrea Doria. (Where be their galleys
now?) Hajji (so he was called, he said from having been to Jerusalem)
stopped at last at the door of a shabby house, and throwing it open with
a hospitable smile, bade us welcome. We mounted a creaking stair, and
found things within better than the promise of the exterior. One half
the floor of the room was raised perhaps a foot, and matted neatly, and
a nicely carpeted and cushioned divan ran around the three sides, closed
at the two extremities by a lattice-work like the arm of a sofa. The
windows were set in fantastical arabesque frames, the upper panes
coarsely coloured, but with a rich effect, and the view hence stretched
over the Hellespont toward the south, with a delicious background of the
valleys about Lampsacus. No palace window looks on a fairer scene. The
broad Strait was as smooth as the amber of the old Hebrew’s pipe, and
the vines that furnished Themistocles with wine during his exile in
Persia, looked of as golden a green in the light of the sunset, as if
the honour of the tribute still warmed their classic juices.
The rich Turkish coffee was brought in by an old woman, who left her
slippers below as she stepped upon the mat, and our host followed with
chibouques and a renewed welcome. A bright pair of eyes had been peeping
for some time from one of the chambers, and with Hajji’s permission I
called out a graceful creature of fourteen, with a shape like a Grecian
Cupidon and a timid sweetness of expression that might have descended to
her from the gentle Ruth of Scripture. There are lovely beings all over
the world. It were a desert else. But I did not think to find such a
diamond in a Hebrew’s bosom. I have forgotten to mention her hair, which
was very remarkable. I thought at first it was dyed with henna. It
covered her back and shoulders in the greatest profusion, braided near
the head, and floating below in glossy and silken curls of a richness
you would deny nature had you seen it in a painting. The colour was of
the deep burnt brown of a berry, almost black in the shade, but catching
the light at every motion like threads of gold. In my life I have seen
nothing so beautiful. It was the “hair lustrous and smiling” of quaint
old Burton.[13] There was something in it that you could scarce avoid
associating with the character of the wearer—as if it stole its
softness from some inborn gentleness in her heart. I shall never thread
my fingers through such locks again!
We shook our kind host by the hand, and stepped gingerly down in the
fading twilight to our boat. As we were crossing an open space between
the bazaars, two gentlemen in a costume half European, half Oriental,
with spurs and pistols, and a quantity of dust on their moustaches,
passed, and immediately turned and called me by name. The last place in
which I should have looked for acquaintances, would be Gallipoli. They
were two French exquisites whom I had known at Rome, travelling to
Constantinople with no more serious object, I dare be sworn, than to
return with long beards from the East. They had just arrived on
horseback, and were looking for a khan. I commended them to my old
friend the Jew, who offered at once to lodge them at his house, and we
parted in this by-corner of Thrace, as if we had but met for the second
time in a morning stroll to St. Peter’s.
* * * * *
We lay till noon in the glassy harbour of Gallipoli, and then the breeze
came slowly up the Hellespont, its advancing edge marked by a crowd of
small sail keeping even pace with its wings. We soon opened into the
extending sea of Marmora, and the cloudy island of the same name is at
this moment on our lee. The sun is setting gorgeously over the hills of
Thrace, and thankful for sea-room once more, and a good breeze, we make
ourselves certain of seeing Constantinople to-morrow.
* * * * *
We were ten miles distant when I came on deck this morning. A long line
of land with a slightly waving outline began to emerge from the mist of
sunrise, and with a glass I could distinguish the clustering masses and
shining eminences of a distant and far extending city. We were
approaching it with a cloud of company. A Turkish ship-of-war, with the
crescent and star fluttering on her blood-red flag, a French cutter
bearing the handsome tricolor at her peak, and an uncounted swarm of
merchantmen, taking advantage of the newly-changed wind, were spreading
every thread of canvass, and stretching on as eagerly as we toward the
metropolis of the East. There was something in the companionship which
elated me. It seemed as if all the world shared in my anticipations—as
if all the world were going to Constantinople.
I approached the mistress of the East with different feelings from that
which had inspired me in entering the older cities of Europe. The
interest of the latter sprang from the past. Rome, Florence, Athens,
were delightful from the store of history and poetry I brought with me
and had accumulated in my youth—from what they once were, and for that
of which they preserved the ruins. Constantinople, on the contrary, is
still the gem of the Orient—still the home of the superb Turk, and the
resort of many nations of the East—still all that fires curiosity and
excites the imagination in the descriptions of the traveller. I was
coming to a living city, full of strange people and strange costumes,
language, and manners. It was, to the places I had seen, like the warm
and breathing woman perfect in life, to the interesting but lifeless and
mutilated statue.
As the distance lessened, the tall, slender, glittering minarets of a
hundred mosques were first distinguishable. Towers, domes, and dark
spots of cypresses next emerged to the eye, and a sea of buildings,
followed undulating in many swells and widening along the line of the
sea as if we were approaching a continent covered to its farthest limits
with one unbroken city.
We kept on with unslackened sail to the shore which seemed closed before
us. A few minutes opened to us a curving bay, winding in and lost to the
eye behind a swelling eminence, and as if mosques, towers, and palaces,
had spread away and opened to receive us into their bosom, we shot into
the heart of a busy city, and dropped anchor at the feet of a cluster of
hills, studded from base to summit with buildings of indescribable
splendour.
An American gentleman had joined us in the Dardanelles, and stood with
us, looking at the transcendent panorama. “What is this lovely point,
gemmed with gardens and fantastic palaces, and with every variety of
tree and building on its gentle slope descending so gracefully to the
sea?” _The Seraglio!_ “What is this opening of bright water, crowded
with shipping, and sprinkled with these fairy boats so gaily decked and
so slender, shooting from side to side like the crossing flight of a
thousand arrows?” _The Golden Horn_, that winds up through the city and
terminates in the valley of Sweet Waters! “And what is this other
stream, opening into the hills to the east, and lined with glittering
palaces as far as the eye can reach?” _The Bosphorus._ “And what is
this, and that, and the other exquisite and surpassing beauty—features
of a scene to which the earth surely has no shadow of a parallel?”
Patience! patience! We have a month before us, and we will see.
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[13] “Hair lustrous and smiling. The trope is none of mine. Æneas
Sylvius hath _crines ridentes_.”—_Anatomy of Melancholy._
* * * * *
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