Farewell to Constantinople—Europe and the East compared—The
Departure—Smyrna, the great Mart for Figs—An Excursion into
Asia Minor—Travelling Equipments—Character of the
Hajjis—Encampment of Gipsies—A Youthful Hebe—Note—Horror of
the Turks for the “Unclean Animal”—An Anecdote.
I have spent the last day or two in farewell visits to my favourite
haunts in Constantinople. I galloped up the Bosphorus, almost envying
_les ames damnées_ that skim so swiftly and perpetually from the
Symplegades to Marmora, and from Marmora back to the Symplegades. I took
a caique to the Valley of Sweet Waters, and rambled away an hour on its
silken sward. I lounged a morning in the bazaars, smoked a parting pipe
with my old Turk in the bezestein, and exchanged a last salaam with the
venerable Armenian bookseller, still poring over his illuminated Hafiz.
And last night, with the sundown boat waiting at the pier, I loitered
till twilight in the small and elevated cemetery between Galata and
Pera, and, with feelings of even painful regret, gazed my last upon the
matchless scene around me. In the words of the eloquent author of
“Anastasius,” when taking the same farewell, “For the last time, my eye
wandered over the dimpled hills, glided along the winding waters, and
dived into the deep and delicious dells, in which branch out its jagged
shores. Reverting from these smiling outlets of its sea-beat suburbs to
its busy centre, I surveyed, in slow succession, every chaplet of
swelling cupolas, every grove of slender minarets, and every avenue of
glittering porticoes, whose pinnacles dart their golden shafts from
between the dark cypress-trees into the azure sky. I dwelt on them as on
things I never was to behold more; and not until the evening had
deepened the veil it cast over the varied scene from orange to purple,
and from purple to the sable hue of night, did I tear myself away from
the impressive spot. I then bade the city of Constantine farewell for
ever, descended the high-crested hill, stepped into the heaving boat,
turned my back upon the shore, and sank my regrets in the sparkling
wave, across which the moon had already flung a trembling bar of silvery
light, pointing my way, as it were, to other unknown regions.”
There are few intellectual pleasures like that of finding our own
thoughts and feelings well described by another!
I certainly would not live in the East; and when I sum up its
inconveniences and deprivations to which the traveller from Europe, with
his refined wants, is subjected, I marvel at the heart-ache with which I
turn my back upon it, and the deep dye it has infused into my
imagination. Its few peculiar luxuries do not compensate for the total
absence of _comfort_; its lovely scenery cannot reconcile you to
wretched lodgings; its picturesque costumes and poetical people, and
golden sky, fine food for a summer’s fancy as they are, cannot make you
forget the civilised pleasures you abandon for them—the fresh
literature, the arts and music, the refined society, the elegant
pursuits, and the stirring intellectual collision of the cities of
Europe.
Yet the world contains nothing like Constantinople! If we could compel
all our senses into one, and live by the pleasures of the eye, it were a
paradise untranscended. The Bosphorus—the superb, peculiar,
incomparable Bosphorus! the dream-like, fairy-built seraglio! the sights
within the city so richly strange, and the valleys and streams around it
so exquisitely fair! the voluptuous softness of the dark eyes haunting
your every step on shore, and the spirit-like swiftness and elegance of
your darting caique upon the waters! In what land is the priceless sight
such a treasure? Where is the fancy so delicately and divinely pampered?
Every heave at the capstan-bars drew upon my heart; and when the
unwilling anchor at last let go its hold, and the frigate swung free
with the outward current, I felt as if, in that moment, I had parted my
hold upon a land of faëry. The dark cypresses and golden pinnacles of
Seraglio Point, and the higher shafts of Sophia’s sky-touching minarets
were the last objects in my swiftly-receding eye, and, in a short hour
or two, the whole bright vision had sunk below the horizon.
We crossed Marmora, and shot down the rapid Dardanelles in as many hours
as a passage up had occupied days, and, rounding the coast of Anatolia,
entered between Mitylene and the Asian shore, and, on the third day,
anchored in the bay of Smyrna.
“Everybody knows Smyrna,” says MacFarlane, “_it is such a place for
figs_!” It is a low-built town, at the head of the long gulf, which
bears its name, and, with the exception of the high rock immediately
over it, topped by the ruins of an old castle, said to embody in its
walls the ancient Christian church, it has no very striking features.
Extensive gardens spread away on every side, and, without exciting much
of your admiration for its beauty, there is a look of peace and rural
comfort about the neighbourhood that affects the mind pleasantly.
Almost immediately on my arrival, I joined a party for a few days’ tour
in Asia Minor. We were five, and, with a baggage-horse, and a mounted
suridjee, our caravan was rather respectable. Our appointments were
orientally simple. We had each a Turkish bed (alias, a small carpet), a
nightcap, and a “copy-hold” upon a pair of saddle-bags, containing
certain things forbidden by the Koran, and therefore not likely to be
found by the way. Our attendant was a most ill-favoured Turk, whose
pilgrimage to Mecca (he was a hajji, and wore a green turban) had, at
least, imparted no sanctity to his visage. If he was not a rogue, nature
had mis-labelled him, and I shelter my want of charity under the Arabic
proverb: “Distrust thy neighbour if he has made a hajji; if he has made
two, make haste to leave thy house.”
We wound our way slowly out of the narrow and ill-paved streets of
Smyrna, and passing through the suburban gardens, yellow with lemons and
oranges, crossed a small bridge over the Hermus. This is the favourite
walk of the Smyrniotes, and if its classic river, whose “golden sands”
(here, at least), are not golden, and its “Bath of Diana” near by, whose
waters would scarce purify her “silver bow,” are something less than
their sounding names; there is a cool, dark cemetery beyond, less
famous, but more practicable for sentiment, and many a shadowy vine and
drooping tree in the gardens around, that might recompense lovers,
perhaps, for the dirty labyrinth of the intervening suburb.
We spurred away over the long plain of Hadjilar, leaving to the right
and left the pretty villages, ornamented by the summer residences of the
wealthy merchants of Smyrna, and in two or three hours reached a small
lone café, at the foot of its bounding range of mountains. We dismounted
here to breathe our horses, and while coffee was preparing, I
discovered, in a green hollow hard by, a small encampment of gipsies.
With stones in our hands, as the caféjee told us the dogs were
troublesome, we walked down into the little round-bottomed dell, a spot
selected with “a lover’s eye for nature,” and were brought to bay by a
dozen noble shepherd-dogs, within a few yards of their outer tent.
The noise brought out an old sun-burnt woman, and two or three younger
ones, with a troop of boys, who called in the dogs, and invited us
kindly within their limits. The tents were placed in a half circle, with
their doors inward, and were made with extreme neatness. There were
eight or nine of them, very small and low, with round tops, the cloth
stretched tightly over an inner frame, and bound curiously down on the
outside with beautiful wicker-work. The curtains at the entrance were
looped up to admit the grateful sun, and the compactly-arranged
interiors lay open to our prying curiosity. In the rounded corner
farthest from the door, lay uniformly the same goat-skin beds, flat on
the ground, and in the centre of most of them, stood a small loom, at
which the occupant plied her task like an automaton, not betraying by
any sign a consciousness of our presence. They sat cross-legged like the
Turks, and had all a look of habitual sternness, which, with their thin,
strongly-marked gipsy features, and wild eyes, gave them more the
appearance of men. It was the first time I had ever remarked such a
character upon a class of female faces, and I should have thought I had
mistaken their sex, if their half-naked figures had not put it beyond a
doubt. The men were probably gone to Smyrna, as none were visible in the
encampment. As we were about returning, the curtain of the largest tent,
which had been dropped on our entrance, was lifted cautiously, by a
beautiful girl, of perhaps thirteen, who, not remarking that I was
somewhat in the rear of my companions, looked after them a moment, and
then fastening back the dingy folds by a string, returned to her
employment of swinging an infant in a small wicker hammock, suspended in
the centre of the tent. Her dark, but prettily-rounded arm, was decked
with a bracelet of silver pieces, and just between two of the finest
eyes I ever saw, was suspended by a yellow thread, one of the small gold
coins of Constantinople. Her softly-moulded bust was entirely bare, and
might have served for the model of a youthful Hebe. A girdle round her
waist sustained loosely a long pair of full Turkish trousers, of the
colour and fashion usually worn by women in the East, and caught over
her hip, hung suspended by its fringe the truant shawl that had been
suffered to fall from her shoulders and expose her guarded beauty. I
stood admiring her a full minute, before I observed a middle-aged woman
in the opposite corner, who, bending over her work, was fortunately as
late in observing my intrusive presence. As I advanced half a step,
however, my shadow fell into the tent, and starting with surprise, she
rose and dropped the curtain.
We remounted, and I rode on, thinking of the vision of loveliness I was
leaving in that wild dell. We travel a great way to see hills and
rivers, thought I, but, after all, a human being is a more interesting
object than a mountain. I shall remember the little gipsy of Hadjilar,
long after I have forgotten Hermus and Sypilus.
Our road dwindled to a mere bridle-path, as we advanced, and the scenery
grew wild and barren. The horses were all sad stumblers, and the uneven
rocks gave them every apology for coming down whenever they could forget
the spur, and so we entered the broad and green valley of Yackerhem (I
write it as I heard it pronounced), and drew up at the door of a small
hovel, serving the double purpose of a café and a guard-house.
A Turkish officer of the old régime, turbanned and cross-legged, and
armed with pistols and ataghan, sat smoking on one side the brazier of
coals, and the caféjee exercised his small vocation on the other. Before
the door, a raised platform of greensward and a marble slab, facing
toward Mecca, indicated the place for prayer; and a dashing rider of a
Turk, who had kept us company from Smyrna, flying past us and dropping
to the rear alternately, had taken off his slippers at the moment we
arrived, and was commencing his noon devotions.
We gathered round our commissary’s saddle-bags and shocked our Mussulman
friends, by producing the unclean beast[18] and the forbidden liquor,
which, with the delicious Turkey coffee, never better than in these
way-side hovels, furnished forth a traveller’s meal.
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[18] Talking of hams, two of the Sultan’s chief eunuchs applied to an
English physician, a friend of mine at Constantinople, to accompany them
on board the American frigate. I engaged to wait on board for them on a
certain day, but they did not make their appearance. They gave, as their
apology, that they could not defile themselves by entering a ship
polluted by the presence of that unclean animal, the hog.
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