The present descendant is still in possession of the title, and is said
to be a liberal-minded and hospitable old Turk, of the ancient and
better school. His camels are the finest that come into Smyrna, and are
famous for their beauty and appointments.
Our devout companion left us at the first turning in the town, laying
his hand to his breast in gratitude for having been suffered to annoy us
all day with his brilliant equitation, and we stumbled in through the
increasing shadows of twilight to the caravanserai.
It is very possible that the reader has but a slender conception of an
_oriental hotel_. Supposing it, at least, from the inadequacy of my own
previous ideas, I shall allow myself a little particularity in the
description of the conveniences which the travelling Zuleikas and
Fatimas, the Maleks and Othmans, of eastern story, encounter in their
romantic journeys.
It was near the farther outskirt of the large city of Magnesia (the
accent, I repeat, is on the penult), that we found the way encumbered
with some scores of kneeling camels, announcing our vicinity to a khan.
A large wooden building, rather off its perpendicular, with a great many
windows, but no panes in them, and only here and there a shutter
“hanging by the eyelids,” presently appeared, and entering its
hospitable gateway, which had neither gate nor porter, we dismounted in
a large court, lit only by the stars, and pre-occupied by any number of
mules and horses. An inviting staircase led to a gallery encircling the
whole area, from which opened thirty or forty small doors; but, though
we made as much noise as could be expected of as many men and horses, no
waiter looked over the balustrades, nor maid Cicely, nor Boniface, or
their corresponding representatives in Turkey, invited us in. The
suridjee looked to his horses, which was his business, and to look to
ourselves was ours; though, with our stiff limbs and clamorous
appetites, we set about it rather despairingly.
The Figaro of the Turks is a caféjee, who, besides shaving, making
coffee, and bleeding, is supposed to be capable of every office required
by man. He is generally a Greek, the Mussulman seldom having sufficient
facility of character for the vocation. In a few minutes, then, the
nearest Figaro was produced, who scarce dissembling his surprise at the
improvidence of travellers who went about without pot or kettle, bag of
rice or bottle of oil, led the way with his primitive lamp to our
apartment. We might have our choice of twenty. Having looked at the
other nineteen, we came back to the first, reconciled to it by sheer
force of comparison. Of its two windows, one alone had a shutter that
would fulfill its destiny. It contained neither chair, table, nor
utensil of any description. Its floor had not been swept, nor its walls
whitewashed since the days of Timour the Tartar. “Kalo! Kalo!” (Greek
for _you will be very comfortable_), cried our commissary, throwing down
some old mats to spread our carpets upon. But the mats were alive with
vermin, and, for sweeping the room, the dust would not have been laid
till midnight. So we threw down our carpets upon the floor, and driving
from our minds the too luxurious thoughts of clean straw, and a corner
in a warm barn, sat down, by the glimmer of a flaring taper, to wait,
with what patience we might, for a chicken still breathing freely on his
roost, and turn our backs as ingeniously as possible on a chilly
December wind, that came in at the open window, as if it knew the
caravanserai were free to all comers. There is but one circumstance to
add to this faithful description—and it is one which, in the minds of
many very worthy persons, would turn the scale in favour of the hotels
of the East, with all its disadvantages—_there was nothing to pay_!
Ali Bey, in his travels, predicts the fall of the Ottoman empire from
the neglected state of the khans; this inattention to the public
institutions of hospitality, being a falling away from the leading
Mussulman virtue. They never gave the traveller more than a shelter,
however, in their best days; and to enter a cold, unfurnished room,
after a day’s hard travel, even if the floor were clean, and the windows
would shut, is rather comfortless. Yet such is Eastern travel, and the
alternative is to take “the sky for a great coat,” and find as soft a
stone as possible for your pillow.
We gathered around our pilaw, which came in the progress of time, and
consisted of a chicken, buried in a handsomely-shaped cone of rice and
butter, forming, with a large crater-like black bowl in which it stood,
the cloud of smoke issuing from its peak, and the lava of butter flowing
down its sides, as pretty a miniature Vesuvius as you would find in a
modeller’s window in the Toledo. Encouraging that sin in Christians,
which they would not commit themselves, they brought us some wine of the
country, the sin of drinking which, one would think, was its own
sufficient punishment. With each a wooden spoon, the immediate and only
means of communication between the dish and the mouth, we soon solved
the doubtful problem of the depth of the crater, and then casting lots
who should lie next the window to take off the edge of the December
blast, we improved upon some hints taken from the fig-packers of Smyrna,
and with an economy of exposed surface which can only be learned by
travel, disposed ourselves in a solid body to sleep.
The tinkling of the camels’ bells awoke me as the day was breaking, and
my toilet being already made, I sprang readily up and descended to the
court of the caravanserai. It was an eastern scene, and not an
unpoetical one. The patient and intelligent camels were kneeling in
regular ranks to receive their loads, complaining in a voice almost
human, as the driver flung the heavy bales upon the saddles too roughly,
while the small donkey, no larger than a Newfoundland dog, leader of the
long caravan, took his place at the head of the gigantic file, pricking
back his long ears as if he were counting his spongy-footed followers,
as they fell in behind him. Here and there knelt six or seven, with
their unsightly humps still unburdened, eating with their peculiar
deliberateness from small heaps of provender, and scattered over the
adjacent fields, wandered separately the caravan of some indolent
driver, browsing upon the shrubs, and looking occasionally with
intelligent expectation toward the khan, for the appearance of their
tardy master. Over all rose the mingled music of the small bells with
which their gay-covered harness was profusely covered, varied by the
heavy beat of the larger ones borne at the necks of the leading and last
camels of the file, while the retreating sounds of the caravans already
on their march, came in with the softer tones which completed its
sweetness.
In a short time my companions joined me, and we started for a walk in
the town. The necessity of attending the daylight prayers makes all
Mussulmans early risers, and we found the streets already crowded, and
the merchants and artificers as busy as at noon. Turning a corner to get
out of the way of a row of butchers, who were slaughtering sheep
revoltingly in front of their stalls, we met two old Turks coming from
the mosque one of whom, with the familiarity of manners which
characterises the nation, took from my hand a stout English riding-whip
which I carried, and began to exercise it on the bag-like trowsers of
his friend. After amusing himself a while in this manner, he returned
the whip, and, patting me condescendingly on the cheek, gave me two figs
from his voluminous pocket, and walked on. Considering that I stand six
feet in my stockings, an unwieldy size, you may say, for a pet, this
freak of the old Magnesian would seem rather extraordinary. Yet it
illustrates the Turkish manners, which, as I have often had occasion to
notice, are a singular mixture of profound gravity and the most childish
simplicity.
We found a few fine old marble columns in the porches of the mosques,
but one Turkish town is just like another, and after an hour or two of
wandering about among the wooden houses and narrow streets, we returned
to the khan, and, with a cup of coffee, mounted and resumed our journey.
I have never seen a finer plain than that of Magnesia. With an even
breadth of seven or eight miles, its length cannot be less than fifty or
sixty, and throughout its whole extent it is one unbroken picture of
fertile field and meadow, shut in by two lofty ranges of mountains, and
watered by the full and winding Hermus. Without fence, and almost
without human habitation, it is a noble expanse to the eye, possessing
all the untrammelled beauty of a wilderness without its detracting
inutility. It is literally “clothed with flocks.” As we rode on under
the eastern brow of Mount Sypilus, and struck out more into the open
plain, as far as we could distinguish by the eye, spread the snowy sheep
in hundreds, at merely separating distances, checkered here and there by
a herd of the tall jet-black goats of the East, walking onward in slow
and sober procession, with the solemn state of a funeral. The road was
lined with camels coming into Smyrna by this grand highway of nature,
and bringing all the varied produce of Asia Minor to barter in its busy
mart. We must have passed a thousand in our day’s journey.
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