continuity of human life in a given place. Generations of men will
go on living on the same spot, though it does not offer them any
particular advantages--even though, living there, they must be content
with poverty, with insignificance, with a station outside the great
swing of the world. ‘Some little town by river or sea-shore’ is all
their universe--not theirs only, but their children’s and their
children’s children’s from century to century. You are tempted to
believe that these anchored people, who cling like limpets to the rock
on which they find themselves, are no more conscious of their own
vitality than the limpets their counterparts; rather, it is the town
which knows that it exists; with living eyes it watches the coming and
going of races, the ebb and flow of the tide of history, trusting in
its own immortality, and careless whether Greek or Barbarian, washed up
to it on the wave of a folk wandering, fill its walls.
The truth is that man is a stationary animal, and that which seems
a backwater of life is the stagnant mid-ocean, after all--that is the
first lesson which the East writes in her big wise book, which you may
read and read and never reach the last chapter. For the most part, he
is unenterprising; he prefers to remain with the evils he knows rather
than risk worse fortune in the hope of better, and unless he be driven
forth by hunger or by the sword, he will not seek fresh woods and
pastures new. It has been said before, and repeated until it should be
familiar, that the swift current of Western life is an exception to
the general rule, and not the rule itself--said and repeated, and yet
when you are brought face to face with tiny towns and remote fishing
villages, for whose birth there seems to be no reason but caprice, for
whose continuance even caprice can scarcely be alleged, and which may
yet boast two thousand years of life, you will stand aghast at such
hoar conservative antiquity. Where is progress? Where is the march
of civilization? Where the evolution of the race?... You have passed
beyond the little patch of the globe where these laws bear sway; they
are not eternal, still less are they universal, the great mass of
mankind is untouched by them, and if you must generalize, you will
come nearer the truth in saying that man is stationary than that he is
progressive.
On the southern shores of the Black Sea, where the mountains of
Anatolia drop their wooded flanks into the water, cluster villages to
which the name of progress is unknown; the Greek colonists laid their
foundation stones--wanderers they, a seafaring folk of unexampled
activity. In those steep valleys and on the open stretches of beach
two thousand five hundred years have slipped past almost unnoticed.
The Greek names, indeed, have been mutilated by barbarian tongues, and
other gods are worshipped on those coasts; the temples of Amisus are
buried among brushwood, Mars finds no honour in the island of Aretias,
nor does the most adventurous of travellers follow in the steps of
Hercules through the mouth of the Acherusian cavern; the slender
columns of minarets shoot upwards over the flat white roofs, and the
Turk is master in the Bithynian waters. For the rest, what difference?
Still from sheltered beaches the rude fishing-boats put forth; still
the hard oaks are felled in the mountains and sold in the Byzantium of
to-day; still the people till their fields of millet, and gather the
wild fruits on the fertile lower slopes; still the harbour of Sinope
is filled with the sound of the building of ships, as it was when the
Milesian navy anchored behind Cape Syrias. Nay, more--you may journey
here with the latest guide-book in one hand and Strabo in the other,
and the Murray of the first century will furnish you with more minute
information than he of the nineteenth.
For Strabo knew this country well; it was the land of his birth.
‘Amaseia, my native place,’ lay not far away on the banks of the river
Iris, which the Turks call Jeschil Irmak. He praises its fertility, he
unfolds its riches, he enumerates every village it contains. He is much
occupied, too, with its past history, and to his elaborate researches
there is little to be added even to-day, save here and there the story
of a Genoese and a Venetian settlement, or of a Byzantine church, and
of the final invasion of the Turkish conquerors. He collects much
conflicting evidence concerning the origin of divers tribes along the
coast--a question which it would puzzle the most learned ethnologist
to decide with the materials that lay to Strabo’s hand; he notes the
boundary of the dominions of Mithridates, and the manner in which
the Roman emperors divided the kingdom of Pontus in later times; he
sketches the history of Heracleia, the Eregli of to-day, and the birth
of the colony of Amastris, which the Turks call Sesamyos, and which was
formed by Queen Amastris, niece of Darius and wife of Dionysius the
Tyrant, out of four cities--Sesamus, Cytorum (whose green box groves
have been famous since the days of Homer), Cromna, and Tieum, the
Turkish Tilijos. Above all, he catches at any allusion in the Homeric
poems: from these mountains, sings the poet, the warriors marched
forth to the defence of Troy; ‘From Cromna and Ægialus and the lofty
Erythini’ they came, they left their country where the wild mules
breed, they left the banks of the Sangarius and of that Parthenius
stream whose name was tribute to its virgin beauty. I fear the wild
mules breed no longer by the river Sakaria, but Ægialus is still to be
found under the name of Kara Agatsch, and the lofty Erythini still lift
their rocky heads out of the sea.
Some of the places which Strabo mentions were sufficiently unimportant
even in his day to have escaped all observation less accurate than his
own. Concerning Ak Liman, an anchoring place to the west of Sinope, he
quotes a joking proverb: ‘He who had nothing to do built a wall about
Armene.’ Some have fallen from a higher estate, as Sinope itself, which
was a naval power of repute in the first century, and the Colchian
coast at the eastern end of the Black Sea, which, as he justly remarks,
must have been celebrated in the earliest antiquity, as is shown by
the story of Jason’s voyage thither in search of the Golden Fleece.
He explains the legend of the Golden Fleece, by the way, quite in the
modern spirit: the torrents of the Caucasus, he says, bring down gold;
the Barbarians collect their waters in troughs pierced with holes and
lined with the fleeces of sheep, which catch and hold the dust.
Such memories were our travelling companions as we coasted along the
wooded shores towards the latter end of the spring. They came rushing
in upon us one evening when our ship stopped at a tiny port built at
the bottom of a valley sloping down to the water. Intercourse with
the outer world is limited to such passing visits of steamers; the
inhabitants of the Black Sea villages grow nearly all the necessaries
of life in their fertile valleys, and content themselves with a small
exchange of wood and dried fruits for cloth and sugar and a few of the
luxuries of civilization, amongst which, oddly enough, tombstones are
an important item. As we watched the wide Turkish boats, rising high
out of the water at stem and stern, which came dancing out towards us
over the swell of the waves and poised round us like great sea-birds
while the tombstones and the bundles of goods were dropped into them,
we fell to wondering, while the evening light faded from land and sea,
what the meagre history of Ineboli could be--so remote it seemed, so
forgotten--and it presently occurred to us to consult the learned
Strabo. There in his book it was duly mentioned: ‘Abonteichos, a small
city,’ ‘the modern Ineboli,’ added a commentator, and we gazed with
different eyes at the small city which was backed by such a long line
of experiences.
Next day we reached Samsoun, Strabo’s ‘Amisus, which Mithridates
adorned with temples.’ A number of Turks, who were passengers
on our ship, disembarked there, for what reason Heaven only
knows--Mithridates’ pomp has been long since forgotten, and one would
think that a man must be hard pressed for occupation before he would
seek it in Samsoun. The town lies on sloping ground, rising gently
upwards; on the hill behind it we could see the broad road which leads
to Diabekir and the people walking in it; the sound of Armenian church
bells came to us across the water, and from hour to hour a clock tolled
out Turkish time, though no one seemed to heed it. Some Armenian women
came on board to examine the ship, and ran up and down the companion
ladders, looking at everything with curious eyes and much loud
laughter. They were dressed in very bright colours and unveiled, which
struck us as indecent in a woman.
Very early on the following morning we woke to find ourselves outside
Kerasounde, the Greek Pharnacia--‘a small fortified city,’ says Strabo.
It was a charming little place, just waking under the misty morning
sunshine. Its irregular streets dropped down to the water’s edge, and
even beyond, for some of the wide-roofed houses were planted out on
stakes in the shallow bay. The mountain-side against which it nestled
was white with blossoming fruit-trees, and behind it the higher peaks
were still white with snow. As for the fortifications, they seem to
have disappeared, and, indeed, what foe would turn his arms against
Kerasounde?
Towards mid-day we reached Trebizond, and greeted it with almost as
much enthusiasm as Xenophon must have displayed when he and his Ten
Thousand saw it lying at their feet with the blue sea beyond, and knew
that an end was set at last to their weary march. Greek and Roman and
Genoese merchant have successively borne sway in Trebizond; fortress
walls, churches and monasteries tell of their rule. The Turk has
encamped himself now within the fortified limits of the old town, but
a large Armenian suburb, half hidden under plane-trees, holds to the
religion which he displaced.
It happened that on that day the foundations of an Armenian church
were being laid, and the Christian town wore a festive air. We watched
the ceremony, standing among a crowd of men dressed in their shabby
European best, and of women wrapped in white feridgis, with beautiful
caps of coins upon their heads. It was not very attractive. A priest
was reading prayers before a gaudy picture of the Virgin, a troop of
little boys droned Gregorian chants, their discordant voices led by
an old man in a fez and blue spectacles, and with no ear for music,
who was apparently the choirmaster. Higher up, on the top of the
hill overlooking the town, we came upon an interesting and beautiful
Byzantine monastery, walled about like a fort--though the walls were
in ruins--and with a chapel cut into the solid rock. The chapel walls
were covered with frescoes, the half-effaced portraits of saints and
of Greek emperors--those banished Comneni who ruled in Trebizond; a
pleasant smell of incense hung about the courtyard, round which were
built the cells of the monks--rather dilapidated indeed, but still
charming under their roofs of red tiles; blue starch hyacinths lifted
their prim heads beneath the apple trees which stood in full flower in
the rocky gardens on the hillside, and from the summit of the peaceful
walls we could see far inland towards the valleys where the Amazons
dwelt, and where, says Strabo, quoting Homer, were the silver mines.
Silver is still to be found there, but the Amazons are gone; they might
have troubled the good monks in their lodging on the hill-top.
So with regret we returned to our ship, and quitted the cypresses
and the plane trees of Trebizond, taking our way ‘to Phasis, where
ships end their course,’ as Strabo quotes (or very near it), thence to
pursue our journey by means other than those which the primitive Murray
recommends, and through countries which he knew only by hearsay.
_TRAVELLING COMPANIONS_
ALL the earth is seamed with roads, and all the sea is furrowed
with the tracks of ships, and over all the roads and all the waters a
continuous stream of people passes up and down--travelling, as they
say, for their pleasure. What is it, I wonder, that they go out for to
see? Some, it is very certain, are hunting the whole world over for the
best hotels; they will mention with enthusiasm their recent journey
through Russia, but when you come to question them, you will find that
they have nothing to tell except that in Moscow they were really as
comfortable as if they had been at home, and even more luxurious, for
they had three varieties of game at the table of their host. Some have
an eye fixed on the peculiarities of foreign modes of life, that they
may gratify their patriotic hearts by condemning them when they differ
(as they not infrequently do) from the English customs which they have
left, and to which their thoughts turn regretfully; as I have heard the
whole French nation summarily dismissed from the pale of civilization
because they failed to perceive that boiled potatoes were an essential
complement to the roast. To some travelling is merely the traversing of
so many hundred miles; no matter whether not an inch of country, not an
object of interest, remains in the eye of the mind--they have crossed
a continent, they are travellers. These bring back with them only the
names of the places they have visited, but are much concerned that the
list should be a long one. They will cross over to Scutari that they
may conscientiously say they have been in Asia, and traverse India from
end to end that they may announce that they have visited all the tombs.
They are full of expedients to lighten the hardships of a road whose
varied pleasures have no charm for them. They will exhibit with pride
their bulky luncheon-baskets, and cast withering glances at that humble
flask of yours which has seen so many adventures over the edge of your
coat-pocket. ‘Ah,’ they will say, ‘when you have travelled a little you
will begin to learn how to make yourself comfortable.’ And you will
hold your peace, and hug your flask and your adventures the closer to
your heart.
All these, and more also, are not travellers in the true sense of the
word; they might as well have stayed at home and read a geography-book,
or turned over a volume of photographs, and engaged a succession
of cooks of different nationalities; but the real travellers, what
pleasures are they seeking in fresh lands and strange cities? Reeds
shaken in the wind are a picturesque foreground, but scarcely worth a
day’s journey into the wilderness; men clothed in soft raiment are not
often to be met with in hotel or caravanserai, and as for prophets,
there are as many at home, maybe, as in other places.
Well, every man carries a different pair of eyes with him, and no two
people would answer the question in the same fashion. For myself, I am
sometimes tempted to believe that the true pleasure of travel is to be
derived from travelling companions. Such curious beings as you fall in
with, and in such unexpected places! Although your acquaintance may be
short in hours, it is long in experience; and when you part you feel
as intimate as if you had shared the same slice of bread-and-butter in
your nursery, and the same bottle of claret in your college hall. The
vicissitudes of the road have a wonderful talent for bringing out the
fine flavour of character. One day may show a man in as many different
aspects as it would take ten years of the customary life to exhibit.
Moreover, time goes slowly on a ship or in a railway train, and a man
is apt to better its pace by relating the incidents of his career to a
sympathetic listener. In this manner the doors of palaces and of secret
chambers in remote corners of the world fly open to you, and though you
may have crossed no more unfamiliar waters than those of the North Sea,
you pass through Petersburg and Bokhara, Poland and Algeria, on your
way to Antwerp. English people are not so communicative, even abroad,
and what they have to tell is of less interest if you are athirst
for unknown conditions; their tales lack the charm of those which
fall from the lips of men coming, as it were, out of a dream-world,
crossing but once the glow of solid reality which lights your own path,
and vanishing as suddenly as they came into space. Like packmen, we
unfasten our wares, open our little bundle of experiences, spread them
out and finger them over: the ship touches at the port, the silks and
tinsel are gathered up and strapped upon our backs and carried--God
knows where!
The man who carried the most amusing wares we ever examined was
a Russian officer, and he spread them out for our inspection as we
steamed round the eastern and northern coasts of the Black Sea. He
was a magnificent creature, fair-haired, blue-eyed, broad-shouldered,
and tall; he must have stood six feet four in those shining top boots
of his. His beard was cut into a point, and his face was like that of
some handsome, courteous seventeenth-century nobleman smiling out of a
canvas of Vandyke’s. He was a mighty hunter, so he told us; he lived
with his wife and daughters out in Transcaspia, where he governed
a province, and hunted the lions and the wolves (and perhaps the
Turkomans also) with packs of dogs and regiments of mounted huntsmen.
He was writing a book about Transcaspia; there would be much, he said,
of hunt in its pages. He spoke English, and hastened to inform us that
every Russian of good family learnt English from his youth up. I trust
that the number of his quarterings was in direct proportion to the
number of grammatical errors he perpetrated in our tongue, for if so
our friend must have been as well connected as he said he was. He told
wonderful stories of the wealth and splendour of his family; all the
great Slav houses and all their most ancient names seemed to be united
in his person. His mother was Princess This, his wife was Princess
That, his father had been a governor of such and such a province; he
himself, until a few years back, was the most brilliant of the officers
In the Czar’s guards--indeed, he had only left Petersburg because, with
a growing family, he could no longer afford to spend £40,000 a year (or
some such sum--I remember it seemed to us enormous). ‘And you know,’ he
added, ‘under £40,000 a year you cannot live in Petersburg--not as _I_
am accustomed to live.’ So he had retired to economize among the lions
and the Turkomans until his fortunes should retrieve themselves, which
there was every prospect of their doing, since his wife was to inherit
one of the largest properties in Russia, and he himself would come into
the second largest on the death of his mother. Of that lady he spoke
with a gentle sorrow: ‘She is very miser,’ he would say whenever he
alluded to her. ‘She send me her blessing, but no pence!’ We murmured
words of sympathy, but he was not to be comforted--her avarice rankled.
‘Ah, yes,’ he sighed, when her name came up again in the course of
conversation, ‘she is very miser!’
It may be that our agreeable companion did not consider himself to
be bound by those strict rules of accuracy which tied in a measure our
own tongues; his velvets may have been cotton-backed, and his diamonds
paste, for all their glitter. We had the opportunity of testing only
one of his statements, and I must confess that we were lamentably
disappointed. One evening at dinner he was telling us of the prodigies
of strength he had accomplished, how he had lifted men with one finger,
thrown stupendous weights, and grappled with wild beasts of monstrous
size. He even descended into further details. ‘In the house of my
mother,’ he said, ‘I took a napkin and bent him twenty times and tore
him across!’ We were interested, and, to beguile the monotony of the
evening, we begged him to perform the same feat on the captain’s linen;
he acceded, and after dinner we assembled on deck full of expectation.
The napkin was produced and folded three or four times; he tore and
tore--not a thread gave way! Again he pulled and wrenched until he was
red in the face with pulling (and we with shame), and still the napkin
was as united as ever. At length we offered some effete excuses--in
the house of his mother, even though she was so very miser, the linen
was probably of finer quality; no one could be expected to tear one
of the ship’s napkins, which was as coarse as sackcloth! He accepted
the explanation, but nothing is so disconcerting as to be convicted of
exaggeration, and though we were heartily sorry for our indiscretion,
our acquaintance never again touched those planes of intimacy which
it had reached before. Next morning we arrived at Odessa, and parted
company with distant bows, nor will he ever, I fear me, send us the
promised volume containing some description of Transcaspia and much of
hunt.
There is a curious reservation in the communicativeness of a Russian.
He will tell you all you wish to know (and more) of himself and of his
family, but once touch upon his country or his Government and he is
dumb. We noticed this trait in another casual travelling acquaintance,
who talked so freely of his own doings, and even of more general
topics, such as the novels of Tolstoi, that we were encouraged to
question him concerning the condition of the peasantry. ‘What of the
famine?’ we asked. ‘Famine!’ he said, and a blank expression came over
his face. ‘I have heard of no famine--there is no famine in Russia!’
And yet credible witnesses had informed us that the people were dying
by thousands in the southern provinces, not so far removed from
Batoum, where our friend occupied a high official position. Doubtless,
if we had asked of the Jews, he would have replied with the same
imperturbable face--‘Jews! I have heard of no Jews in Russia!’
The charm of such friendships lies in their transient character.
Before you have time to tire of the new acquaintances they are gone,
and in all probability the discussion, which was beginning to grow
a little tedious, will never be renewed. You meet them as you meet
strangers at a dinner-table, but with less likelihood that the chances
of fortune will throw you again together, and less within the trammels
of social conventions. Ah, but for those conventions how often might
one not sit beside the human being instead of beside the suit of
evening clothes! People put on their indistinctive company manners with
their indistinctive white shirt-fronts, and only once can I remember
to have seen the man pierce through the dress. The transgressor was
a Turkish secretary of legation. He was standing gloomily before a
supper-table, eyeing the dishes with a hungry glance, when someone
came up and asked him why he would not sup. ‘Ah,’ he sighed, ‘ma
ceinture! Elle est tellement serrée que je ne puis rien manger!’ There
was a touch of human nature for you! The suffering Turk said nothing
memorable for the rest of the evening, but his own remark brands
itself upon the mind, and will not be easily forgotten. I have often
wondered at what compromise he and his waistband have arrived during
the elapsing years, which must, in spite of all his care, have added
certain inches to his circumference.
Not with such fugitive acquaintanceships alone may your
fellow-travellers beguile the way: there are many whom you never come
to know, and who yet afford a delightful field for observation. In
the East a man may travel with his whole family, and yet scarcely
interrupt the common flow of everyday life, and by watching them you
will learn much concerning Oriental habits which would never otherwise
have penetrated through the harem walls. A Turk will arrive on board
a ship with half a dozen of his womenkind and as many misshapen
bundles, scarcely to be distinguished in form from the beveiled and
becloaked ladies themselves. In the course of the next half-hour you
will discover that these bundles contain the beds of the family, their
food, and all the necessaries of life for the three or four days of the
voyage. They will proceed presently to camp out on some portion of the
deck roped off for their protection, spreading out their mattresses
and their blankets under the open sky, performing what summary toilet
they may under their feridgis, eating, sleeping, praying, conversing
together, or playing with the pet birds they have brought with them,
all in full view of the other passengers, but with as little heed to
them as if the rope barrier were really the harem wall it simulates.
Meantime, the grave lord of this troop of women paces the deck with
dignified tread, and from time to time stops beside his wife and
daughters and throws them a word of encouragement.