The Plague—Spread of the Pestilence—The Greek
Victim—Self-Devotion—Death of the Plague Smitten—The Widow’s
Walk—Plague Encampments—The Infected Family—The Greek Girl
and her
Lover—Non-Conductors—Plague—Perpetuators—Vultures—Melancholy
Concomitants of the Pestilence—Carelessness of the Turks—The
Pasha of Broussa—Rashness of the Poorer Classes—Universality
of the Disease in the Capital.
Every one who has even heard of Constantinople is aware that it is a
city of Plague and Fires. Of the latter I have already spoken, although
slightly; for it is a singular fact that, although several extensive
conflagrations occurred during our residence in the East, not only in
the Capital but in its environs, it never was our fortune to witness
one.
Of the still more frightful visitation of the Plague, I could not
perhaps make mention at a more fitting moment than the present (the
commencement of September) when, contrary to the prognostics of the
_soi-disant_ conversant in such matters, it has broken out with renewed
violence in every direction. The Imperial Palace of Beglierbey is
deserted in consequence of its having been visited by the
Pestilence—The “Seven Towers” have become a Plague-Hospital for the
Greeks. We presented ourselves with an order for admittance at the
celebrated Seraglio at the Point, and found that here the scourge had
preceded us, and that the gates were closed—Even Therapia, seated on
the edge of the shore, and open to the healthful breezes from the Black
Sea, is adding daily to the list of victims; and we were received by a
friend at the extreme opposite end of the sofa on our return thence,
(and even that reluctantly,) from a dread that we might prove to be
Plague-conductors, and infect her family.
To the honour of our common nature it may be stated that even this
direful visitation tends at times to bring out some of the noblest
qualities of which frail humanity is susceptible. If man may be pardoned
a feeling of absorbing selfishness, it is surely in the hour when he has
before him the prospect of one of the most frightful of all deaths; but,
even in the short month which has elapsed since the disease deepened,
examples have not been wanting of that utter absence of
selfishness—that self-sacrifice for the security of others—which gives
to the fate of the victim almost the character of martyrdom.
Only a day or two since, a poor Greek inhabitant of Therapia was
suddenly attacked with sickness, and, thinking that he recognised the
symptoms of the malady, he immediately proceeded to his cottage; and,
stopping ere he touched the threshold, called to his wife, who,
astonished on seeing him at so unwonted an hour, and struck by the
change in his appearance, was about to approach him, when he desired her
to stand back; and then, calmly telling her that he was unwell, though
he knew not from what cause, and that he was unwilling during a time of
Plague to run the risk of infecting his family, or of compromising his
house, he desired her to throw him his furred pelisse. “If it be a mere
passing sickness,” he added, as he prepared to depart, “it will only
cost me a night in the open air—If it be the Plague, you will at least
save our few articles of clothing, and the few comforts of the
cottage—Recommend me to the Virgin and St. Roch.”
And thus he left his home; and wandered, weak and heart-sick, to the
mountains. He felt that the brand was on him; and he went to die alone,
he knew not how—whether as a wild and frantic maniac, gathering
strength from the fever which would turn his blood to fire, and howling
out his anguish to the winds of midnight, without one kind voice to
comfort, or one fond hand to guide him, until at length he dropped down
to die upon the damp earth—or, as a shivering and palsied wretch,
fainting from thirst, and quivering with sickness, to gaze hour after
hour from his bed of withered leaves, or parched-up turf, upon the blue
bright sky, and the myriad stars, until they went out one by one as his
sight failed, and his pulse ebbed——
On the morrow the wife hastened to the mountains with food, in search of
her husband. She had not taught herself to believe that the Plague had
touched him, and she feared that he might suffer from hunger. She led
one of her children by the hand—his favourite child—and they were long
before they found him—for although the young clear voice of the boy
shouting out his name was borne far away upon the elastic air of the
mountain, there was no answer to the call—alas! there could be
none—the father lay cold and stiff in a gully of the rock,-the
Plague-smitten had ceased to suffer!
The anguish of the unfortunate woman may be conceived—In her first
agony she sprang towards the body, but the shriek of her child recalled
her to a sense of her peril, and the fate that she would entail upon her
little ones. The struggle was long and bitter; and at length she turned
away with the weeping boy, and returned into the village to proclaim her
widowhood.
I have already mentioned the fact of my having on one occasion
inadvertently ridden into the midst of a Plague-encampment. Such
occurrences are, however, rare; as, in the event of several families
being compromised and sent to the mountains, there is generally a
military guard stationed at every avenue leading to their temporary
dwellings, to prevent the approach of strangers, and to form their
medium of subsistence.
A melancholy tale was related to me by a lady at Therapia, who had
watched from day to day the proceedings of one of these little mountain
colonies through a telescope. It consisted of a miserable family; the
father gray-haired and feeble, and the mother bent and palsied—The
children died first, one by one, for the disease drank their young blood
more eagerly than the chill stream which moved sluggishly through the
veins of the aged parents; and at length the old couple were left alone.
They used to sit side by side for hours under a tree facing their
village—the birth-place of their dead ones, whom they had put into the
earth with their own hands—but within a week the childless mother
sickened in her turn and the gray old man dragged a wretched mattress to
the foot of the tree from beneath which his stricken wife had no longer
power to move; and he held the water to her lips, and he put the bread
into her grasp; but all his care availed her nothing—and with his lean
and trembling hands he scratched her a grave under the shadows of the
tree that she had loved in life; and, when the earth had hidden her from
his sight, he lay down across the narrow mound to die in his turn. His
worldly toils were ended!
Scarcely less affecting was the devotion of a young Greek girl, whose
lover, smitten with plague, was conveyed to the temporary hospital at
the Seven Towers. No sooner had she ascertained whither they had carried
him, than without saying a word to her parents, who would, as she well
knew, have opposed her design, she left her home, and presented herself
at the portal of the infected fortress as the nurse of the young Greek
caïquejhe who had been received there on the previous day. In vain did
the governor, imagining from her youth, and the calm and collected
manner in which she offered herself up an almost certain victim to the
pestilence, that she was not aware of her danger, endeavour to dissuade
her from her project. She was immoveable; and was ultimately permitted
to approach the bedside of the dying sufferer.
Not a tear, not a murmur escaped her, as she took her place beside his
pillow, and entered upon her desperate office. In the paroxysms of his
madness, as the poison was feeding upon his strength, and grappling at
his brain, he spoke of her fondly—he talked to her—he stretched forth
his arms to clasp her—and then he thrust her from him as he yelled out
his agony, and his limbs writhed beneath the torture of the passing
spasm.
And she bore it all unshrinkingly; and even amid her misery she felt a
thrill of joy as she discovered that pain and madness had alike failed
to blot her image from his memory. But there were moments less cruel
than these, in which reason resumed her temporary sway, and the devoted
girl was pressed to the fevered bosom of her fated lover; and in these,
brief as they were, she felt that she was over-paid for all.
But the struggle even of youth and strength against the most baneful of
all diseases could not last for ever—The patient expired in the arms of
his devoted mistress; and as he breathed his last, bequeathed to her at
once his dying smile, and the foul poison which was coursing through his
veins. She saw him laid in his narrow grave; and then she turned away
with the conviction that she, too, was plague-smitten!
She did not return to her home: but she stood a few paces from one of
the companions of her youth, and bade her bear to her aged parents her
blessing and her prayers: and this done she fled to the mountains, and
sought out a solitary spot wherein to die—None knew how long she
lingered, for she was never seen again in life; but her body was found a
few days afterwards beneath a ledge of earth, in a doubled-up position,
as though the last spasm had been a bitter one.
She who had sacrificed herself to smooth the last hours of him whom she
had loved, perished alone, miserably, in the wild solitude of the Asian
hills; and her almost Roman virtue has met with no other record than
the brief one in which I have here attempted to perpetuate the memory of
her devotion and her fate.
It seems as though men apprehended contagion in the very name of the
plague, for they have adopted terms that render its repetition needless.
Should you inquire for a family which has become compromised, you are
told that “they are gone to the mountains,” and you understand at once
that they are infected; and when numbers are daily dying about you, in
reply to your desire to learn the amount of the evil, you are answered
that there are so many, or so many “accidents.”
Every respectable house, and every public establishment, has in its
court, or its outer hall, a small wooden erection, precisely like a
sentry box raised on rollers, into which you are obliged to enter during
a period of plague, before you are admitted into the interior of the
building; and where you stand upon a latticed flooring, while aromatic
herbs are burnt beneath, whose dense and heavy vapour soon envelops you
in a thick smoke, which is said to prevent contagion.
Every competent authority declares the disease to be propagated by
contact; and it is singular to see the care with which every individual
passing along the public streets avoids all collision with his
fellow-passengers. The lower order of Turks are the greatest sufferers
from the plague, in consequence of the filthy personal habits of the men
employed as street-porters and labourers; their law only requiring them
to wash their hands and feet before entering their mosques, or repeating
their prayers; while I have good authority for stating that this class
of individuals purchase an inner garment of dark and coarse material,
which they retain day and night without removing it, until it falls to
pieces.
If filth be a plague-conductor, it is not, consequently, surprising,
that great numbers of these persons are invariably carried off during
the year; and the same cause doubtlessly accounts for the excessive
mortality among the Jews; who frequently increase the spread of the evil
by possessing themselves of the garments of the plague-victims, which
they buy secretly from the relatives; reckless, in the event of a good
bargain, of the fatal consequences which may ensue alike to themselves
and to others.
This may appear to be an excess of madness almost incredible; but it is,
nevertheless, an incontrovertible fact.
I know not whether it be a common occurrence for vultures to haunt the
environs of the city during the prevalence of plague, but it is certain
that we never saw one until its commencement; and that before we left
they were to be met with in numbers, in the very centre of the
shipping, preying upon the offal that had been flung into the port, or
winging their heavy flight along the mountains, as though scenting their
revolting banquet.
There is, to me, something frightful in the terror with which, in a
season of virulent pestilence, each individual avoids all human contact,
and looks upon his best friends as vehicles of destruction.—In the
shrinking of relatives from each other, and the unwonted selfishness of
usually free and generous spirits. Nor is the sensation a comfortable
one, with which you remember that you are yourself considered as
infected, and treated with distrust accordingly; and in moments of
depression find yourself speculating in your own mind the probability of
the fear being well-grounded. Does your head ache?—It is a symptom of
plague—Are you sick and faint from heat?—It is even thus that the
pestilence frequently declares itself in the first instance—If you take
cold upon the Bosphorus, you have laid the corner-stone of the
malady—and over-fatigue may induce the exhaustion which lends strength
to the incipient evil. It is impossible to describe the effect of this
continual necessity for caution: but even this is trifling beside the
constant dread of contact with infection. It is vain to affect a mad
courage leading you to set at defiance these accumulated dangers; there
are moments when an unconquerable dread will creep over the heart, and
sicken the spirit.
There are many who do not fear death; but they are habituated to
associate it in their minds with an accustomed home, and watching
friends, and anxious tenderness; all accessories tending to soften the
pang of disease, and to smooth the path of dissolution—Few are they who
could contemplate calmly the death-hour of the plague-smitten—the
hunted from his home—haunting the hills in his polluted solitude; and
contaminating the pure air of Heaven by the fetid breathings of
pestilence—shrieking out his madness to the mocking moon,—and dying in
his despair on the bare earth; a loathsome thing, to which even a grave
is sometimes denied!
And yet, terrible as is the picture which I have drawn almost despite
myself, it is surprising how little caution is observed by the Turks to
escape from so direful a visitation. They have an absurd superstition
that all True Believers who die, either by the hand of the Sultan, or by
the visitation of the plague, go straight to Paradise, and to the arms
of the Houri, without the intervention of any purgatorial quarantaine;
and they account very satisfactorily for the infrequency of plague-cases
among the Franks, by declaring that Allah does not love them
sufficiently to grant them so desirable a privilege; without troubling
themselves to remark the precautions taken by Europeans to prevent the
spread of the disease, all of which are utterly neglected by the natives
of the country. It is indeed astonishing how blindly the Orientals run
the greatest risks, in the most unnecessary and apparently wilful
manner.
The Pasha of Broussa was informed by his family physician that his
_Chiboukjhe_, or pipe-bearer, who had been in his service from his
boyhood, and to whom he was much attached, had discovered symptoms of
plague, which would render it necessary for his Excellency to take such
precautions as might tend to ensure the safety of the other members of
his family; and accordingly he gave immediate orders for the removal of
the harem to a village in the mountains; and ordered all the linen of
the inmates of the salemliek to be washed, and their woollen clothing
carefully aired and fumigated, ere it was transported thither, together
with the male members of his establishment.
The Chiboukjhe, hearing of the intended removal of the household, begged
to see his master once more ere he left the city; and the Pasha complied
with his request without scruple, as a couple of yards intervening
between the plague-patient and his visitor are sufficient to prevent
contagion. But the kind-hearted Pasha had not calculated upon his own
powers of resistance; and, when the favourite domestic upbraided him
with his cruelty in leaving him to die alone, and recalled to his memory
a score of circumstances in which he had proved his attachment and
devotedness to the welfare of his master; the Pasha, with a recklessness
perfectly incomprehensible, ordered that fresh linen should be put upon
the patient: that his own garments should be destroyed and replaced by
new ones; and that he should be forthwith comfortably placed in an
araba, and conveyed to the village whither all the rest of the
establishment had been previously removed.
The order was obeyed; and the infected man arrived on the evening of the
second day at the mountain-retreat, bringing with him the deadly disease
which was rapidly sapping his life-blood. Four-and-twenty hours had not
elapsed when the favourite wife of the Pasha, a beautiful girl of
sixteen, expired, in a fit of raging madness, upon her cushions: the
pestilence had wrought so rapidly in her young and delicate frame that
no time had been afforded for precaution or help; the weak blindness of
the Pasha had sacrificed his wife, compromised his house, and endangered
the whole family. He rushed from one apartment to another like a maniac,
but the bolt had fallen; and at midnight his youngest child lay a corpse
on its dead mother’s bosom.
They were buried hurriedly beneath the tall trees of the garden; and the
earth was but newly scattered over their graves when another of the
Pasha’s wives breathed her last—Suffice it that in the space of ten
days, out of a harem consisting of nineteen persons, there remained only
an aged negress and two infant children; while the salemliek had also
suffered severely, although not in the same proportion.
I could pile anecdote on anecdote upon the same melancholy theme, but my
heart sickens as I record them; and that which I have just narrated will
sufficiently demonstrate the improbability of this terrific scourge ever
being expelled the country by the precautionary measures of the natives.
On the subject of the plague the Turks appear to possess neither
prudence nor judgment. Their belief in predestination deepens their
natural want of energy; and thus the malady is suffered to run its
deadly course almost unchecked, and to sweep off its thousands yearly,
amid pangs at which humanity shudders.
Another circumstance which must tend to perpetuate the pestilence in the
East, exists in the fact that, when the local authorities have
ascertained the existence of plague in a dwelling, the house becomes
what is termed “compromised;” and after the family of the smitten has
been ejected, and sent to the mountains, it is painted throughout its
whole interior, cleansed, and fumigated; a process which, owing to the
risk incurred by the individuals employed in the work, and the species
of quarantaine to which they are subjected during its continuance, is
sufficiently expensive to deter the poorer portions of the population
from declaring the presence of the disease in their families; as,
combined with their forty days of exile in the mountains, during which
time they are, of course, unable to earn any thing for the future
support of the survivors, it subjects them to want and misery, which
they seek to evade by running a greater, but, as they fondly hope, less
certain risk. They trust to their _felech_, or constellation, that the
infection will not spread, and are undoubtedly, in many cases, the more
readily induced to do this, that they have at least the melancholy
satisfaction of closing the eyes of their dead, and of seeing them
expire amid their “household gods;” instead of knowing that their last
hour was one of despairing abandonment, as well as of acute agony; and
having to search for their bodies in the desolate spots to which their
wretchedness might have driven them.
It has been ascertained that atmospherical changes have no influence on
the plague. It rages amid the snow-storm as virulently as beneath the
scorching suns of summer. Diet does not affect it—The street-porter,
living upon black bread, and fruit frequently immature, and the
Effendi, whose tray is spread with culinary delicacies, are alike liable
to be smitten.
Its origin and its cure are both unknown—It is the hair-suspended sword
ever ready to do its work of death; and none can foretell the moment in
which the blow may come.—It chases the haughty Sultan from his Palace;
and the labourer from his hut—It is in the close and thickly-peopled
streets of the city, and on board the majestic vessels that ride the
blue waves of the Bosphorus—And there is not a sojourner in the East
who can forget the first occasion on which, when he asked the meaning of
the gloom that hung upon men’s brows, and the mysterious murmur that ran
through the crowd on a new outbreak of the malady, he was answered by
some passer-by,—“IT IS THE PLAGUE!”
There can be no doubt that at the present time,[9] the pestilence has
spread farther and faster than it might otherwise have done from the
extreme scarcity, indeed, I may almost say, want of water in the
Capital. The poorer classes, whose means render them unable to purchase
this necessary of life at an exorbitant price from the individuals who
established an extemporaneous trade, by freighting their caïques with
water at the European villages on the Channel, and vending it in the
city, being necessitated to make use of foul and stagnant pools for the
purpose of preparing their food; and to dispense almost entirely with a
beverage generally taken to excess by both sexes.
As the wells and tanks of the nearest hamlets failed, the water-sellers
extended their voyages even to Therapia; and their demands became
comparatively extravagant. Men watched the clouds in vain—the sun set
in a blaze of gold and purple; and morning broke in blushes from behind
the Asian mountains—the noon-day sky was blue and bright—not a vapour
passed across its beauty—and no rain fell. Women crowded about the
fountains in the vain hope that each moment the exhausted spring might
well out afresh—Children wept, and asked vainly for their accustomed
draught; the marble basins of the city remained empty, and the bright
sunbeams played upon the smooth surface of the glittering stone.
On the Asian shore, the waters had not yet failed; and the famous
fountain of Scutari, fed by a mighty volume descending from the dusky
mountain of Bulgurlhu, still poured forth its flashing stream; but, from
some superstition, whose nature I was unable to ascertain, the
authorities did not permit the transfer of water from the Asiatic to the
European shore; and this noble fountain, which would have supplied all
the wants of the city, was suffered to flow on, and waste its stream in
the channel.
I shall not easily forget the constant succession of busy human beings,
who, from day-dawn to dusk, thronged the mouth of a well not a hundred
paces from our residence at Yenikeuÿ. Every cistern in the lower quarter
of the village had become exhausted; but this solitary well, fed from a
mountain source, still held out; and it was only by the necessity of
lengthening the ropes to which the buckets were affixed, and the
consequent increase of labour required to raise them, that any
diminution of the water could be perceived.
Children of ten or twelve years of age could no longer, as heretofore,
accomplish this portion of the household toil: nor would they, even had
their strength sufficed to the effort, have been able to make it: for as
the demand for water increased on all sides, the battle was truly to the
strong at the village well. Men who met as friends, and greeted each
other kindly as they approached it, strove and struggled for precedence,
until they at length parted in wrath, and frequently with blows; while
the owners of the neighbouring cottages, to whose exclusive use this
spring had hitherto been considered sacred, murmured in vain at the
intrusion on their privileges, and were fain to strive and struggle like
the strangers.
The reason adduced by the Greeks for the abundance of water in this
well, was the sanctity conferred on it by the priesthood at the close
of the previous vintage; when they had made a solemn procession to its
mouth, and flung in a handful of small silver coins, contributed for the
purpose by the poorer inhabitants of the village, a small vase of holy
water, and a pinch of consecrated salt!
While the drought was at its height, a community of Turning Dervishes
made a pilgrimage to the Sweet Waters; where the Barbyses, always a very
inconsiderable stream, had shrunk to half its accustomed volume; and
there, having previously prostrated themselves in prayer, they performed
their evolutions round the principal cistern of the valley; and at a
certain point of the ceremony flung into the air small vessels of red
clay, fresh from the potter’s hands, while, as they fell back, they
besought that every empty tank might overflow, and every goblet be
filled.
The spectacle was a very striking one; and it was followed by the
observance of another yet more touching. At dusk the village children,
walking two and two, and each carrying a bunch of wild flowers, drew
near the cistern in their turn; and sang, to one of the thrilling
melodies of the country, a hymn of supplication; while at the conclusion
of each stanza, they scattered a portion of the blossoms over the
shattered fragments of the vases flung into the basin by the Dervishes.
Nothing could be more affecting! Man, shrinking under a consciousness of
his unworthiness, put his prayer into the mouth of innocent infancy; as
though he trusted to the supplication uttered by pure lips and guileless
hearts, when he dared not hope for mercy through his own agency. Every
evening during the drought, that “linked chain” of childhood repaired to
the same spot, and raised the same song of entreaty to an all-powerful
Creator; and the echoes of the Valley flung back the infant voices of
the choir as they swelled upon the wind of evening with a pathos which
affected me to tears. It was only on the day preceding that of our
departure from Constantinople that the prayer was answered; and, as the
light vapoury rain fell upon the parched and yawning earth, my thought
instantly reverted to the infant choristers of the Sweet Waters; whose
artless hymn may be freely translated as follows:—
HYMN OF THE TURKISH CHILDREN.
Allah! Father! hear us;
Our souls are faint and weak:
A cloud is on our mother’s brow,
And a tear upon her cheek.
We fain would chase that cloud away,
And dry that sadd’ning tear;
For this it is to-night we pray—
Allah! Father! hear.
We seek the cooling fountain,
Alas! we seek in vain;
The cloud that crowns the mountain
Melts not away in rain.
The stream is shrunk which through our plain
Once glided bright and clear;
Oh! ope the secret springs again—
Allah! Father! hear.
We bring thee flowers, sweet flowers,
All withered in their prime;
No moisture glistens on their leaves,
They sickened ere their time.
And we like them shall pass away
Ere wintry days are near;
Shouldst thou not hearken as we pray—
Allah! Father! hear.