Leaving Damascus.—Arrival at Beyrout.—Trip to
Aleppo.—Enters Asia Minor.—The Scenery and People.—The
Hills of Lebanon.—Beautiful Scenes about Brousa.—Enters
Constantinople.—A Prophesy.—Return to Smyrna.—Again
in Italy.—Visits his German Friend at Gotha.—The
Home of his Second Love.—Goes to London.—Visits
Gibraltar.—Cadiz.—Seville.—Spanish History.
“Upon the glittering pageantries
Of gay Damascus streets I look
As idly as a babe, that sees
The painted pictures of a book.”
—_Taylor’s Oriental Idyl._
From Damascus Mr. Taylor journeyed to Baalbec, where are the most
imposing ruins to be found in Syria, and where stand six of the most
symmetrical and exquisitely carved columns to be seen in Asia or Europe.
He described the temples and fragments so vividly, that travellers who
have taken his “Lands of the Saracen” for a guide have seldom been
disappointed or mistaken in their anticipations, the actual scene they
look upon being so like the image they formed in their minds while
reading his description. The gift of portraying through the combination
of words and sentences an accurate picture of a city existing in a
strange land and amid a strange people, is a rare gift, and the number
is very few of those who are found to possess it. Mr. Taylor was one of
those privileged ones. In his description we see the columns, cornices,
pediments, walls, platforms, broken pillars, and falling pavilions as
distinctly as they appear when we afterwards look upon those romantic
piles with the natural eye. To him, as to others, it was a study to
determine, if possible, how such enormous blocks of stone, sixty-two feet
long and ten feet in diameter, could have been transported and placed in
the buildings. It is beyond all the skill of to-day to move nine thousand
tons of stone in a single block with the conveniences of that time.
From Baalbec he ascended the Lebanon range of mountains, and looked over
the land from the snowy peak of one of its lofty summits. He visited the
sacred cedars which have lived on the mountain-side for three thousand
years, and then rode on through chasms, along cliffs, and by the sweetest
and richest dells, until he descended to the plain of Beyrout.
His appreciation of the hills of Lebanon is more clearly seen in his
poetry than in his prose. For, when writing of them afterwards, he said:—
“Lebanon, thou mount of story,
Well we know thy sturdy glory,
Since the days of Solomon;
Well me know the Five old Cedars,
Scarred by ages,—silent pleaders,
Preaching in their gray sedateness,
Of thy forest’s fallen greatness,
Of the vessels of the Tyrian
And the palaces Assyrian
And the temple on Moriah
To the High and Holy One!
Know the wealth of thy appointment—
Myrrh and aloes, gum and ointment;
But we knew not, till we clomb thee,
Of the nectar dropping from thee,—
Of the pure, pellucid Ophir
In the cups of vino d’oro,
On the hills of Lebanon!”
In that city he laid his plans for the future, and abandoned his
purposed trip to the Euphrates and Tigris. He relinquished the design
to visit Assyria with great reluctance, and decided to pass through the
interior of Asia Minor to Constantinople. Acting immediately upon this
resolution, without an apparent doubt of being able to traverse safely
the unknown interior of Asia Minor, he engaged a vessel and sailed up
the coast to the Orontes River, and thence to Aleppo. In that city, by a
ludicrous mistake, Mr. Taylor and his travelling companion were invited
to the house of one of the wealthiest merchants, and were treated with
the greatest hospitality by the owner, who supposed they were titled
Englishmen. But when the mistake was revealed, Mr. Taylor had become such
an agreeable visitor that his host insisted upon entertaining them during
their stay in Aleppo. He had been there but a few days before he became
such a general favorite, that he was invited to call on the nobility,
was urged to attend feasts, balls, and weddings, and when he left the
city, the friendly regrets of hundreds of Moslems and Christians followed
him.
Leaving Aleppo early in June, he followed the shore of the Mediterranean
around to the plain of Issus, where Alexander the Great won his great
victory, and thence to Tarsus, the birthplace of the Apostle Paul. It
may have been “no mean city” when Paul was born, but it was a most
insignificant village when Mr. Taylor was there. But as the magnificent
mountains of the Taurus range loomed up along the northern horizon, his
attention was taken from rags, beggary, and ruined fortresses, to snowy
cliffs, over which he had a passion for clambering.
Those persons who have ascended the Alps at the Simplon pass, have a
very good idea of the Taurus mountains, and can realize somewhat of Mr.
Taylor’s satisfaction as he rode up the gorges and peered into the deep
valleys. He loved the mountains anywhere. But the Taurus seemed then,
in the glow of his return to perfect health and with all the profusion
of nature’s living beauties blooming about him, and the eternal snows
gleaming above him, to be the most attractive landscape in the world.
“O deep, exulting freedom of the hills!
O summits vast, that to the climbing view,
In naked glory stand against the blue!
O cold and buoyant air, whose crystal fills
Heaven’s amethystine bowl! O speeding streams,
That foam and thunder from the cliffs below!
O slippery brinks and solitudes of snow,
And granite bleakness, where the vulture screams!”
His visit to Konia (Iconium), the capital of Karamania, was full of
little episodes and personal incidents, which he told afterwards in print
in his own inimitable manner. But nothing of unusual moment occurred
until he reached ancient Phrygia, where the ruins of olden cities and
fortresses interested him much. Their history was almost as unknown as
the story of the temples of Yucatan, and consequently had a mysterious
appearance which charms in a bewildering way the study of a poet.
Riding on over hills and mountains, across delightful streams, through
fertile valleys, associating with the Turks on friendly terms, and
studying their habits and language, Mr. Taylor pushed fearlessly into
the very heart of Asia Minor. Visiting Oezani in its debris, and the
valley of Rhyndacus, they traversed the primeval forests on the Mysian
Olympus, and true to his instincts he sought the heights of Olympus, twin
mountain, in size and literature, with its Grecian namesake. From that
point to Brousa, near the Sea of Marmora, it was but a day’s journey, and
seems to have been the most delightful ride of the whole tour. Gardens,
orchards, grain-fields, thickets of clematis and roses, patches of beech
and oak woodland, and brilliant streams pleased the eye, while the songs
of birds and of happy harvesters charmed the ear. Grand mountains
pierced the skies, covered with dense forests, behind them, and the plain
stretched away—a Garden of Eden—to the shore of a placid inland sea.
They entered Brousa in excellent health and spirits, having seen no
unusual fatigue and been in no great danger during the whole journey
through a country then almost lost and unknown to the civilized world.
From Brousa, the party descended to the Sea of Marmora, and taking a
sail-boat were wafted by the Golden Horn into the interminable fleets of
Constantinople. During his stay in that city he witnessed the display of
the Turkish holidays, saw the Sultan on his throne, entered the mosque of
Saint Sophia, ran to the numerous conflagrations, and unravelled to his
satisfaction some of the social and political problems connected with the
Sultan’s rule and the state of popular discontent. He foretold a war with
Russia, and a contest between the latter and England over the coveted gem
of the East and the gate to the Black Sea. His predictions have already
been proven to be true, showing an insight into political affairs wholly
unlooked for in a young man, and not to be found in such as had travelled
to less purpose.
On leaving Constantinople, he proceeded again to Smyrna, which place
appeared to so much better advantage on his second visit than it did at
his first, that instead of leaving it, as before, with anathemas, he
celebrated his visit with a poem.
“The ‘Ornament of Asia’ and the ‘Crown
Of fair Ionia.’ Yea, but Asia stands
No more an empress, and Ionia’s hands
Have lost their sceptre. Thou, majestic town,
Art as a diamond on a faded robe.”
The reader may not need to be again reminded of Mr. Taylor’s double view
of the scenes he visited, or of the fact that he tried to give faithful
pictures of the present in his prose and left the ideal and fanciful to
his books of poetry. But to understand his disposition, and correctly
estimate his ability, they need to be read together; and hence, before
taking leave of Asia Minor, we venture to quote a verse from a dedication
to his friend Richard H. Stoddard, which we have seen in a volume of Mr.
Taylor’s poems.
“O Friend, were you but couched on Tmolus’ side,
In the warm myrtles, in the golden air
Of the declining day, which half lays bare,
Half drapes, the silent mountains and the wide
Embosomed vale, that wanders to the sea;
And the far sea, with doubtful specks of sail,
And farthest isles, that slumber tranquilly
Beneath the Ionian autumn’s violet veil;—
Were you but with me, little were the need
Of this imperfect artifice of rhyme,
Where the strong Fancy peals a broken chime
And the ripe brain but sheds abortive seed.
But I am solitary, and the curse,
Or blessing, which has clung to me from birth—
The torment and the ecstasy of verse—
Comes up to me from the illustrious earth
Of ancient Tmolus; and the very stones,
Reverberant, din the mellow air with tones
Winch the sweet air remembers; and they blend
With fainter echoes, which the mountains fling
From far oracular caverns: so, my Friend,
I cannot choose but sing.”
At Constantinople Mr. Taylor heard of the action which had been taken by
the United States, looking to the opening of the ports of Japan to the
commerce of America. He heard that a squadron was to leave the United
States in November, under the command of Commodore Perry, and he formed
the resolution to connect himself with the expedition, if possible. To
that end he wrote to his friends and employers in New York, asking them
to obtain permission for him to join the fleet. Not knowing just when
the expedition would sail, nor at what ports it would stop on its way to
Japan, he anxiously watched for information, and inquired at every place
where information was likely to be found.
He was determined to visit Spain before he went to China and Japan, and
was equally resolved to visit the home of his German travelling companion
who ascended the Nile with him, and who had sent pressing invitations to
him to come to Gotha.
The business details connected with his finances and outfit for Spain
and China also called him to London, and arranging his tour so as to
accomplish these diverse ends he visited Malta, where he was delayed
ten days, and then sailed to Sicily, where he witnessed the Catanian
centennial festival in honor of St. Agatha, and where he beheld the awful
spectacle of Ætna in eruption. From Sicily he sailed up the coast to
that Naples which, as a wayfarer in Rome seven years before, he had so
much longed to see, and filled his letters with praises of its beautiful
bay and charming circle of mountain, city, town, cliffs, and islands.
Without changing steamers he proceeded to Leghorn, and going to Florence
experienced that delight of all delights,—in Florence a second time.
Feeling that his time was limited, and “drawn by an unseen influence,”
he hastened on to Venice, and thence through the regions of the Austrian
Tyrol to Munich and Gotha.
Gladsome days at Gotha! Was it not the country of his beloved friend? Was
it not the home of his friend’s niece, Marie Hansen? The daughter of the
great astronomer, Peter Andreas Hansen, was a worthy child of a noble
sire. Mr. Taylor had listened to her praises, but had hardly hoped to
meet her.
“Now the night is overpast,
And the mist is cleared away:
On my barren life at last
Breaks the bright, reluctant day.”
“Quick, fiery thrills, which only are not pangs
Because so warm and welcome, pierce my frame,
As were its airy substance suddenly
Clothed on with flesh; the ichor in my veins
Begins to redden with the pulse of blood,
And, from the recognition of the eyes
That now behold me, something I receive
Of man’s incarnate beauty. Thou, as well
Confessest this bright change: across thy cheeks
A faintest wild-rose color comes and goes,
And, on thy proud lips, Phyra, sits a flame!
Oh, we are nearer!—not suffice me now
The touch of marble hands, reliance cold,
And destiny’s pale promises of love;
But, clasping thee as mortal passion clasps
Bosom to Bosom, let my being thus
Assure itself, and thine.”
—_Taylor’s Deukalion._
After a few weeks spent in and about that pleasant city, to which he was
destined to return and claim his bride, and in which he was to pass many
of the sweetest days of his life, he journeyed to London. There he made
his arrangements for a trip into China, and hastened away to Gibraltar.
On the 6th of November he left the great rock and took passage in a
steamer for Cadiz, in Spain. There he walked the streets three thousand
years old, and wherein, it is said, that Hercules strode. Yet there is
but little now to be seen that would remind one of antiquity. He noticed,
however, the beautiful and graceful women. From Cadiz he went by boat up
the Guadalquiver River to the pretty town of Seville. There were the old
Moorish houses; there the massive Cathedral; there the Saracenic palace
of Alcazar, with all its porches, galleries, arches, and sculptures;
there was the palace called Pilate’s House, with its decorations from
Arabia, and inscriptions from the Koran; and there was the museum
containing Murillo’s best paintings.
But it requires only a short time to visit all the attractions of
Seville, and Mr. Taylor soon proceeded to Granada. In nearly all the
cities which he visited he was reminded, directly or indirectly, of the
visit of his friend, Washington Irving. He found the same guides, or
lodged at the same hotel, or visited some celebrated locality of which
Irving had written.
In Granada was the celebrated fortress of Alhambra, which was captured
from the Moors by the troops of Ferdinand and Isabella the same year that
Columbus discovered America; there was the palace of Charles V.; there
the Carthusian convent, the Monastery of St. Geronimo, and there the
cathedral with the remains of Ferdinand and Isabella. He made a hasty
trip to Cordova and its ancient Moslem mosque. Then, visiting Alhama,
Malaga, and Ronda, he returned hastily to Gibraltar and examined the
renowned fortress, said to be the strongest citadel in the world.
In that somewhat hasty view of Southern Spain he obtained much valuable
information and an experience which often served him in his literary work
as a writer for the public press. Southern Spain and Southern France,
next to Rome itself, are replete with warlike and romantic associations.
Gauls, Romans, Moors, and Spaniards, have made nearly every plain a
battle-field; and the toppling walls of the ancient towers and palaces
tell of the fiercest contests, the most terrible inquisitions, and the
narrowest of narrow escapes. Song and story in prose and rhyme have
combined in every form to make the land attractive, and it is a matter of
deep regret that Mr. Taylor, who was so capable of developing all these
characteristics, had not more time in which to visit them and write out
his experience.