EXCURSION TO CYPRUS.
Quitting my kind friends the Americans in 1839, I was appointed by the
Government to accompany a distinguished European, travelling on a
diplomatic mission through the East. He was an affable, kind man; and
though I have often since made the tour of the places we then visited, I
never so much enjoyed a journey as in his pleasant and instructive
company. Our plan of route was to first visit Cyprus and Asia Minor,
then the northern towns and villages of Syria, and so travel southwards
as far as the limits of Syria and Palestine. All things being prepared,
we set sail from Beyrout late one evening in a small felucca, which,
nevertheless, in fine weather, sailed remarkably well; and, upon the
whole, we were pretty comfortable on board, the entire use of the boat,
to the exclusion of other passengers, having been contracted for.
The land breeze blew freshly all night, and at daylight next morning,
when I staggered up, holding fast by the cords of the mast, there was not
a vestige of Beyrout to be seen; indeed, my inexperienced eyes could
discern nothing but sea and clouds, though the Arab _raīs_ (captain)
positively affirmed, that what I mistook for clouds was the high land of
Cyprus, looming right a-head. This was the first time in my life that I
had ever found myself so far out at sea. At first the novelty of the
sight, the lovely, cool, blue colour of the waves—the azure sky, tinged
with a hundred brilliant hues, all harbingers of the rising sun—the fish
sportively bounding into the air—the sea-gulls—the white sails of vessels
in the distance; all these were a source of amusement and speculation for
the mind; but when the sun rose, and its heat soon drove me to take
shelter under the lee of the large mainsail—when I had nothing to do but
to watch the little boat dipping and plunging into the water—when the
smell of tar, pitch, tobacco-smoke, and fried onions, assailed my
nostrils; then I was fairly and dreadfully sea-sick.
I wrapped myself up in my _kaboot_, and only groaned out answers to the
many kind enquiries made by my new friend and the assiduous boat’s
company. These latter became an intolerable nuisance. First would come
the fat, greasy-looking old _raīs_, with an abominable skewer of fried
meat and onions in one hand, and a nasty, well-mauled piece of bread in
the other. “Eat, my son,” he would say; “eat these delicious morsels,
rivalling in flavour and richness the _Kabābs_ of Paradise; it will
strengthen your heart.” A lizard or a toad could not have been more
nauseous to me than was that man at that moment. Throughout the morning
it was nothing but “_yar Ibn-i_, _koul_, _yar Ibn-i Risk Allah_” (O son,
eat, O son Risk Allah). The heat grew intense towards midday. My
European friend was almost as great a sufferer as myself. Happily the
sea-breeze held on, and at eleven, P.M., that night our felucca was
safely moored at Larnaca, the sea-port town of Cyprus.
During our stay at Larnaca we were lodged with the English vice-consular
agent at that time, a native of the island. He was an obliging old man,
who did all in his power to make our stay agreeable. I was very much
pleased with this place and its hospitable inhabitants; though only so
short a distance from Beyrout, the change was very great. Here there
were numerous carriages and other vehicles, drawn by horses and oxen; and
a drive in an open carriage was both a treat and a novelty to me, who had
never been accustomed to any other mode of locomotion than walking or
riding on horseback. The Greeks and the Roman Catholics had neat
churches here, and the loud chiming of the church bells on a Sunday was a
clear proof that the Christians of this island enjoyed more privileges,
and mixed more freely with the Turks than their brethren on the mainland.
To such an extraordinary pitch is this neighbourly intercourse carried,
that they intermarry with each other without any distinction of creed;
the only part of the Turkish dominions where such a license exists. At
Larnaca the houses were neatly built, and the streets cleanly swept;
there were many pleasant rides and drives about the neighbourhood, but
the climate is insalubrious and peculiarly ill adapted to European
constitutions. The heat in the summer months is beyond endurance; and
there are many salt-pits and marshes in the neighbourhood, which
contribute greatly towards the sufferings of the inhabitants. I am sorry
to say that what I saw of the natives, only helped to confirm me in those
prejudices which exist against them in the East. The men are, for the
most part, notorious gamblers and drunkards, and when drunk or excited,
capable of any act of ferocity. Besides this, they are possessed of all
the cunning of the fox, and are such lovers of mammon, that for the
acquirement of wealth they would be guilty of any dishonesty or
treachery, and sacrifice even the honor and virtue of their families, at
the shrine of their household deity—gold. How painful to reflect that so
many precious souls are thrown away for the want of better teaching and
example; how sad to know that they have no opportunity offered them of
throwing off the heavy yoke of sin, and of bursting the bonds of Satan.
But their bishops and priests are a wicked set, full of conceit and
sinful lusts, selling their own souls, as well as those confided to their
care, for the acquirement of filthy lucre; and so long as they encourage
the vices and dissipations of their flocks as a sure source of revenue to
themselves (for however great the crime, absolution may be purchased, and
slight penances imposed to expiate the most heinous sins); so long as
such a sad state of affairs is permitted, there can be no hope of any
amelioration in their degraded condition. I know not what the motives
for it may be; but poor Cyprus has, so long as I can remember, been more
neglected than other parts of the East by the Missionary Societies in
England and America. This is much to be lamented, and may, I hope, soon
be remedied. Doubtless for the first few years, missionaries would have
almost insuperable difficulties to contend against; but, with God’s
blessing, these would gradually disappear. The climate, though perhaps
unfavourable to their constitution, would be favourable to their cause,
and a skilful physician a boon to an island, where heretofore only quacks
and charlatans have been within the call of suffering humanity. The late
Doctor Lilburn has left a name behind him in Cyprus still reverenced by
the poorer and sicklier inhabitants; his kind urbanity, his charity, and
attention to the sufferings of the sick, and his skill as a physician,
displayed in many extraordinary cures, all these contributed to work out
for him a fame which would have gradually enlarged itself, and penetrated
to the remotest corners of the island, had it pleased the Almighty to
spare him yet awhile on earth; but he died, and we have every hope that
his good Christian spirit is now reaping an eternal harvest of bliss.
With all the crimes and vices attached to the character of the Cypriote
Greeks, they are all staunch observers of the outward forms prescribed by
the elders of their church. They are rigid observers of fast days, and
the same man that would hardly hesitate to rob you of your life, would
rather endure any torments of hunger, or any temptation, than break
through the prescribed rules of abstinence. This, in conjunction with
their frequent attendance at the confessional, clearly shews the implicit
faith they place in the powers and virtues of their priests; and it
appears to me that this strict command over certain lusts of the flesh
might, if diverted into a proper channel, redound much to their credit,
and these very ruffians become devoted Christians, when they have once
learnt the instability of all human hopes, the impotency of man’s agency
to avert a pending destruction, and to give all the glory to God, and no
portion of it to princes or men.
We visited severally Nicosia, the inland capital of the kingdom, Fuma
Gosta, and a few other unimportant sea-side villages. Nicosia is a very
handsomely built town, with beautiful gardens, and surrounded with
strongly built fortifications. The streets are sufficiently wide, and
for the most part kept in admirable repair; good roads are a rare thing
to meet in the East. The _majlis_, or government council, of which the
Pasha himself is president, is composed of Turks and Greeks; but the
greater portion are Greeks. These are the wealthiest part of the
community, and carry everything before them. In some caves attached to
the houses of the most ancient Greek families, there are large supplies
of old Cyprus _camandarea_, upwards of half a century in earthen jars.
This wine is very expensive, and is only used as a luxury or for
convalescent invalids. The supposed sites of Salamis and Paphos were
pointed out to us; in the former place we are told, in the Acts of the
Apostles, that Paul and Barnabas, who landed in Cyprus A.D. 44, preached
Christ crucified; here also, Barnabas, who is reverenced as the principal
Apostle and first Bishop of Cyprus, was stoned, being martyred by the
Jews of Salamis: at Paphos St. Paul struck Bar-jesus with blindness, and
the pro-consul embraced Christianity. The spiritual blindness of the
people of the whole island is, alas! more appalling than that miraculous
visitation on the blaspheming impostor. During our stay in the island,
my friend was much occupied surveying and sketching, and from seeing him
apparently so much attached to the elegant accomplishments, I first
acquired a passion for drawing, but he had no time to instruct me; I had
no means of improving myself; and so I was obliged to let the matter rest
till a favourable opportunity should present itself.
The prevailing language of the island is Greek—Turkish is also spoken,
but Arabic is almost unknown in the interior; a strange circumstance,
considering the proximity of Cyprus to the Syrian coast.
After a month’s ramble in the island, we hired a native boat at Cyprus,
and sailed over to Cilicia, a voyage which we were three days in
accomplishing, owing to the then prevalent light winds and calms.
Mersine, the seaport of Tarshish, or Tersous, the birthplace of St. Paul,
and once a city of no mean repute, is a miserable little village
consisting of some half a hundred huts, inhabited by fever-stricken,
flea-bitten fellahs. There are many pleasant orange groves and citron
walks in the village; and the water and shade, and verdure, form a
picture of ease, and health, and comfort, that but ill accords with the
really pestilential atmosphere of the neighbourhood. Small and
unimportant as Mersine is in itself, it is of considerable importance to
the commerce of Asia Minor, as being the nearest seaport to Tersous and
Adana, whose merchants ship annually large quantities of linseed, wool,
sessame, and cotton, the produce of the vast plains and valleys on either
side of the Taurus range of mountains. From Mersine to Tersous is a
distance of about four hours’ easy riding. We left Mersine the morning
after our arrival an hour before sunrise, so that we reached our
destination before the sun had waxed overpoweringly hot, or the
horse-flies had become annoying. The beauty of the plains we rode over,
their fertility and variegated aspect, and the whole scenery around us,
is scarcely surpassed in any part of the world that I have visited,
before or since. Troops of swift gazelles, and hares innumerable passed
our track as we crossed the plains of Adana; whilst the surrounding
bushes abounded with partridges, quails, and such like game; the marshes
and lakes were literally teeming with water-fowl, from the majestic swan
to the insignificant sandpiper and water-rail; foxes were plentiful, and
so were jackals and hyenas; and the high range of mountains that
encompasses the plain on all sides, save that which faces the sea, was
plentifully stocked with chetahs, leopards, and other equally undesirable
neighbours. The further we rode the higher the elevation of the ground
became, and the land was well laid out in cultivation. Finally, we
reached the really picturesque and vast gardens on the outskirts of the
town, where we met occasional donkey-loads of the choicest fruits and
vegetables. Heaps of cucumbers and lettuces were piled up near the
garden-gates ready for transportation to the market, and the passers-by
coolly helped themselves to some without any interference on the part of
the owners or gardeners, so super-abundantly does nature there produce
her choicest gifts.
Tersous is in some parts handsomely built, in others it was disfigured by
wretched hovels, whilst masses of putrifying vegetable and animal matter
were all that met the eye or assailed the nostril. The inhabitants
seemed equally distinct from each other. The occupants of the better
sort of houses were stout, robust, and healthy-looking fellows, who lived
upon the fat of the land, and inhabited Tersous only during winter, and a
portion of autumn and spring, decamping with their families to the lofty
and salubrious climates of Kulek Bughaz, and other pleasantly situated
villages of the Taurus, as soon as the much-dreaded summer drew nigh.
The inmates of the miserable hovels were, on the contrary, perfect
personifications of misery and despair—sickly-looking, unfortunate
_Fellahin_ Christians and Jews, who must work, and work hard too, to
enable them to inhabit any home, however humble, and are, consequently,
tied down to the place hot weather or cold, martyrs to fevers, dropsy,
and a few other like horrible complaints common to Tersous at all times
of the year, but raging to a fearful extent during the months of June,
July and August. The fevers are occasioned partly from the miasma
arising from the marshes in the neighbourhood and the many stagnant pools
and gutters in the town itself, but chiefly from the frightful
exhalations occasioned by the mounds of putrifying camels, cows, oxen,
goats, horses, and mules, which annually die off from a murrain raging
amongst them, and whose carcases are dragged to the outside of the city’s
old walls, and there indiscriminately piled up in the dry ditches
around—a carnival for jackals and glutted vultures who are so amply
provided for, that even they and the packs of savage curs that infest the
streets of the town, grow dainty in their pickings and become worthless
scavengers from excess of feasting.
This is a frightful but faithful picture of the suburbs of modern
Tersous. The very streets are equally neglected; bestrewed with the
disgusting remains of dogs, cats, and similar nuisances. Indeed, Tersous
might be aptly termed a mass of corruption; and yet it has not been
neglected by bountiful nature. The pleasant waters of the famed Cydnus,
which murmur through the very heart of the town, render its banks on
either side prolific with orange and lemon trees; the sweet odour from
whose blossoms, the fever-wasted form, reclining in a pleasant shade on
its banks, inhales with gusto, but alas! each breath is impregnated with
the noxious poisons that float heavily on the atmosphere.
The inhabitants are negligent and careless about what most vitally
concerns their immediate welfare, vainly sweeping out and cleansing their
own particular court-yards and houses, whilst the streets and the suburbs
are teeming with the seeds of pestilence, and the dark night vapour is
bestridden by direful disease and death. In Tersous there was only one
resident Englishman, and that was the Vice-Consul, who had come there to
die like his predecessors. There were no missionaries, not even a
Catholic priest, though plenty of Italian and French Roman Catholics were
attached to the various consulates, or employed as merchants and fishers
of leeches. The native inhabitants, including a great many from Cyprus,
were of all creeds, the greater part being Mahomedans.
During our stay, we were the guests of a hospitable native Christian,
Signor Michael Saba, a notable merchant of Tersous; but almost all of
those whose acquaintance I made, are since dead, our worthy host among
the rest. He, poor man, fell a victim to a virulent fever, that swept
away hundreds besides himself, within the space of a fortnight. Sad
indeed is the change for the worse in the Tersous of the present day, to
what that town must have been in the primitive days of the Christian
church, when it boasted of its wealth and commerce, and sent forth to the
world such accomplished men as the great Apostle St. Paul; who, speaking
of his native home, could call it _A city of no mean repute in Cilicia_.
Our stay in Tersous did not exceed the time absolutely necessary for the
completion of my friend’s drawings and surveys; and then, nothing loth,
we turned our backs upon the place, crossing the large handsome bridge
built over the river, and so speeded on towards Adana. The country lying
between Tersous and Adana, was very similar to that which we had
traversed between Mersine and the former place, a flat country
imperceptibly rising as we advanced. Most of this country was more or
less cultivated; and we passed countless Turcoman encampments forming
large villages, the whole of whose population was almost exclusively
occupied in making those carpets, for which they are so much renowned.
The great brilliancy of colour and duration of these carpets have
acquired for them a very just celebrity. The Turcoman dyes, brilliant
yellow, green, and purple (the latter possibly the celebrated Tyrian dye,
now lost to the world), are a secret, for the possession of a knowledge
of which, the princely Manchester manufacturers would, I imagine,
willingly loosen their purse-strings; but no one in the East has hitherto
been possessed of sufficient energy and patient inquisitiveness to coax
this secret from the breasts of these wild sons of the wilderness. _En
route_ we passed many old wells which supplied these people and their
flocks with water during the summer months. At some of these wells we
stopped and begged water for ourselves and horses, which was cheerfully
supplied by pretty maidens, who, like Rebecca of old, had come to the
well to supply their father’s flocks with water.
The town of Adana is of very unprepossessing aspect; its houses being
very inferior, both in appearance and dimensions, to those of Tersous.
They have, however, the advantage of being in a much healthier situation,
though, owing to the inconvenient system of excluding windows, which
might overlook the neighbours’ court-yards, the houses are insufferably
close during the hot months; and have more the resemblance of miserable
prisons, with well-secured doors, than of dwelling-houses. The Turks,
who are seldom at home during the day, suffer very little inconvenience
from the fact above alluded to. They, for the most part, have their
little shops on either side of the prodigiously long street that
constitutes Adana; and as these are covered in with thatch-work, and are
moreover carefully watered by public water-carriers several times a day,
the _Dukkans_ afford a desirable retreat from the mid-day heat. If their
wives and families suffer inconvenience from the sultry closeness of the
weather, they are at liberty to lock their doors and resort to any among
the number of pleasant gardens that embellish the suburbs of the town,
there to make _farah_, and enjoy themselves till the hour arrives when
the _Dukkans_ are closed for the night, and the master of the house is
expected home; then all scamper back to receive their hungry husbands,
and if their dinner be not cooked, or be displeasing to their taste, to
receive in addition a few lashes of the _corbash_, in the use of which
they are pretty well skilled in Adana.
The inhabitants are all Moslems—the most intolerably bigoted and
ignorantly proud people to be met with in the whole of the Sultan’s
dominions. No professor of another creed dares to settle in any quarter
of the town, but have their houses scattered around its suburbs, and
these are in general miserable, mean-looking hovels, tenanted by a
wretchedly poverty-stricken people. Though Adana is the head-quarters of
the Pasha of that Pashalik, no Europeans, consuls or merchants, reside in
the place, from which fact alone arises the unbearable hauteur of the
Turks of Adana, who are unaccustomed to mingle with more civilised
people, or to bend to the yoke which the rules of official etiquette
demand and obtain.
Adana has often been the theatre of frightful convulsions and rebellions.
The supreme power of the Sublime Porte has been on more than one occasion
set at defiance, and though the results have been terrible, and the
honour of the Sultan been vindicated in blood, time has worn off the
impression, and rising generations have continued to grow up in insolence
and insubordination, till the natives are so void of civility to the
stranger, that, as a recent author truthfully observes, “it was difficult
for any European to traverse the bazars, especially that part allotted to
shoe-makers, without being disgustingly abused, and even spit at.” In
all other parts, the residence of the Pasha is usually fixed upon as the
residence of the consuls and consular agents; as, for instance, Damascus,
Jerusalem, and Aleppo, the presence of European authorities being always
a wholesome check upon the governors, who have an innate fear of them,
which, notwithstanding their deadly hate and bigotry, they are compelled
to acknowledge by civil words and acts; and if there is one thing that
they fear more than another, it is the facility with which Europeans use
their pens. “I will write to Stamboul,” is a terrible sentence to the
conscience-smitten official. In it he pictures to his imagination an
endless array of evils; first, the certainty of answers; then his being
involved in a difficult correspondence, which is almost sure to
terminate, if he does not speedily amend, in his recall, and possibly
still more severe punishment.
Adana had few inducements to hold out to us for remaining. The Pasha’s
beautiful _serrai_ was the only object worthy of attention. This had
been handsomely constructed, and was picturesquely situated on the banks
of that rapid stream which flows through Tersous. Here also was a bridge
of very fine structure, and apparently of very ancient date. The river
itself was enlivened by a number of floating flour-mills, the rapid
motion of whose wheels threw showers of clear water high up into the air,
and gave a busy and stirring appearance to the, in all other respects,
dull and monotonous town.
We ventured as far north as Kulek Bughaz—that impregnable mountain-pass
which Ibrahim Pasha so strongly fortified, and which modern travellers
state, is now in a ruinous condition. Having, from this great elevation,
taken a survey of the immense extent of plains both on the Konia and
Adana side, we hastened to descend again, since the mountains were
infested with lawless banditti, and the whole country around was in a
very unsettled state, owing to recent warlike demonstrations between
Mehemet Ali Pasha and the Sublime Porte.
Reaching the plains, we once more skirted the river, till we arrived at a
pathway, that led us, after two days’ weary journeyings, to the village
of Ayas, on the northern side of the Gulf of Scanderoon; thus avoiding a
passage through the territories of the descendants of that late notorious
robber-chief, Kuchuk Ali Oglu, whose infamous name had spread terror far
and wide throughout the Ottoman dominions.