LIFE IN SMYRNA--TRIP TO TRIOS--FOSTER FALLS IN LOVE--COCKERELL STARTS
ALONE FOR TOWN OF SEVEN CHURCHES--PERGAMO--KNIFNICH--SUMEH--COMMERCE ALL
IN THE HANDS OF GREEKS--KARASMAN OGLU--TURCOMANS--SARDIS--ALLAH
SHERI--CROSSES FROM VALLEY OF HERMUS TO THAT OF THE MEANDER--HIERAPOLIS
--DANGER OF THE COUNTRY--TURNS WESTWARDS.
"After our experiences of danger, discomfort, and cold at sea, Smyrna
seemed to us a paradise of delightfulness. The consul received us very
hospitably, and introduced us to various acquaintance and to the
pleasures of the carnival which was going on. To you in England its
diversions would have appeared vulgar and flat. To us it was the
quintessence of gaiety to meet the masques, bad as they were, with their
forced hilarity, passing noisily from one Frank house to another. On the
last days of the carnival there were processions, than which nothing
could be more ridiculous. There was a Bacchus on a barrel with various
spouts about his body which, when turned, distributed wine to the
populace; and about the car it rode on, piped and danced a number of
wretches dressed in nankeen stained to a flesh-colour and hung with
faded leaves and flowers. There followed on another car the 'Illness
and Death of Bacchus.' He was in bed surrounded by a procession of
weeping bacchanals, priests, doctors, glisters, and other remedial
engines of gigantic dimensions. In sober daylight such a sight calls for
its enjoyment for an amount of lightheartedness Englishmen do not at all
moments possess--but we, under the circumstances, were very much amused.
We would have started at once on a tour of the Seven Churches if the
road had been clear. For the moment, however, it is blocked by the
presence of a pasha, who with four thousand troops is raiding and making
war on his own account. His army is stationed just across our path, and
I have been strongly advised to wait until the storm is passed over.
I am really not sorry to have such a good reason for remaining a little
longer where I am. The weather is still very severe and quite unfit for
travelling.
Our chief friend in Smyrna is a Mr. Thomas Burgon, married to a
Smyrniote lady. With him we started on February 15 to make a little trip
of four days to Boudron, the ancient Trios.
We went in an open boat up the gulf to Vourlac, that is to say, to the
scala or port of it, which is on an island opposite to the site of the
ancient Clazomenæ, and walked from there to the town, spent the night
there, and next day rode to Boudron. Here was only a tiny cafané, and
nothing but a bench to sleep on. The following days were passed
entirely among the ruins of temples and magnificent buildings, among
which now only a few scattered husbandmen guide their ploughs. If in
Chandler's day--1775--the Temple of Bacchus was anything like what he
describes, it must have been a good deal knocked about since, for it is
very different now. The country we passed through generally is
exceedingly fertile, and, in consequence of the great demand for produce
in and about Smyrna, very prosperous.
When I got back to Smyrna I was fortunate enough to make the
acquaintance of Captain F. Beaufort, R.N.,[37] of H.M. frigate
_Frederiksteen_. He is an accomplished antiquarian, a taste he has been
able to cultivate in these countries, as he has been employed for some
time in charting the coasts hereabouts.
I have suffered not a little from the changeableness of my companions:
Mr. North first, in giving up the whole voyage to Egypt when we were
halfway there, because of the weather; then Douglas, in suddenly at Scio
taking it into his head to go home to England because he was
disappointed of the voyage to Egypt; and now, finally, Foster has fallen
in love and refuses to make with me the tour of the Seven Churches, as
he promised, because he cannot tear himself away from his lady love.
The difficulty mentioned before about the raiding pasha has been
settled. The moslem of this place have conciliated him with a gift of
20,000 piastres, and he is to retire to his own pashalik of Kauna. So I
only await my horses and janissary to set off alone.
_March 1st._--I started in a boat for the scala of Menimen, where the
horses were waiting for me to take me to Menimen on the Hermus. As my
janissary got drunk overnight, I had to wait next morning till seven
before I could start, and in consequence did not get so far as I
intended, and had to sleep in a small cafané, on the site, as I take it,
of the ancient Cumé. We slept six in a small space, the divan, with a
large fire, while the three or four horses were in the space beyond.
Greeks steal when they get a chance, but Turks as a rule may be trusted;
and though Dimitri and I were so tired that we left my arms, silver cup
and spoons, &c, lying about all night, nobody touched them. In the
morning I walked over the site of Cumé. There were large remains of the
wall nine or ten feet thick, and I found the torso of a white marble
statue five feet six inches long, of a very beautiful style. The head,
arms, and legs had been broken off by the aga of the place because he
thought he should find gold inside. It is not far from here to Pergamo,
but it took us unusually long because the water was out in all the low
ground, and one had to keep to the causeways. These are made mostly of
stones taken from ruined cities, in which one saw bits of architraves,
friezes, and so on. Getting off the causeway in one place, I was very
nearly bogged.
At Pergamo I lodged in the khan. The first thing I did was to walk up to
the castle. It is in three stages, with remains of fortification of all
ages, from the earliest to the Genoese, but the Roman are the most
important. On the second stage are two towers and a great wall built of
Roman-Greek fragments of white marble. Above are two larger towers with
a gate and strong wall full of fragments. On the south-west side a gap
or dell in the hill is filled up with arches fifty feet high by twenty
wide, and above them a range of smaller ones, the whole forming a solid
foundation for an immense temple[38] of white marble in the best
Roman-Greek style. The whole work is prodigious and very noble. There
are still considerable remains of the temple, but they are rapidly
disappearing, for the Turks cut them up into tombstones. The ancient
town seems to have been built on the hill. Everywhere on the sides of it
are immense foundations. The amphitheatre is an extraordinary building.
It stands in a narrow valley astride of a river. The two sides of the
valley make the two ends of the oval, and the middle stands upon arches
under which the river runs. I was detained at Pergamo two days by the
weather. It poured all the first day, and the second the water was out
and the river too high for me to get across.
I went to the baths to see the vase for which Canning offered 10,000
piastres, and bought there a beautiful stone for 40 piastres, and some
bronze coins.
I took a guide to show me the way across the river, for the water was
out all over the valley, and even on the causeway it was over our
horses' knees, and to get off it would have been dangerous. On the way
we met the son of a neighbouring aga with a party of fifty armed
followers. We took them at a distance for a company of derrys, or
mountain robbers. But when they came near us we saw they were much too
smart. The young man was merely going to the Aga of Pergamo with the
compliments of his father on the recovery of his health. Seeing me and
my suite dressed _à la Turque_, he sent in passing a man with his
compliments to me to wish me a happy journey.
The pleasant taste left by this graceful courtesy was wiped out by the
next incident, which was far from agreeable. We came upon a camel-driver
whose camels had got bogged in the swamp and could not be made to move
backwards or forwards. Impatience at his trouble had put the man so
beside himself that as we passed on he insulted our party. I did not
understand a word he said, or the cause of offence, but our janissary
was in a moment as furious as he. Both drew their pistols, and I had the
greatest difficulty in containing my man. One or other would have been
killed for no reason that I could comprehend. I managed to drag my man
away, and we went on to Knifnich; after which our horses, wearied with
their wetting and plodding through the heavy mire, could go no further,
and we halted for the night. I had a letter to a resident Armenian
merchant who received me with genuine hospitality; he introduced me to a
relation of his, and the two vied in their honest gallantry. Each
insisted on entertaining me. Finally my friend gave a party in my
honour; and in the evening, the Turkish part of the company having
departed, the women, contrary to the usual Armenian custom, appeared.
The music which had been sent for began to play the Greek circle, the
Romaika, and we all danced it together. At the end I did what I had
understood before was the height of gallantry in these countries: on
passing the musicians, dancing with my fair one, I clapped a dollar into
the hand of the musician to express my enjoyment. Better still, is with
a bit of wax to stick your sequin on his forehead, but I had no wax even
if I had wished to try it. After eating and dancing to our heart's
content, beds were spread, and in courtesy the landlord remained in the
room till I was undressed. Nothing, in fact, could be more cordial than
their treatment of me.
The trade of Knifnich is in raw cotton.
Next day I got as far as Sumeh. The roads were so heavy that our baggage
horse fell and I thought we should never get him up again. This comes of
having started too early in the year. Close to Sumeh, in a dell, is the
picturesque village of Tarcala, with an ancient castle above it. A
friend, Constantine Stephano, took me to call on a Greek family there. I
cannot go into details; suffice it to say I found the people so really
barbarous that I could not bear it and came out. Indeed, in simple
savagery it would be impossible to surpass the natives of this country.
In the khan I found a number of Romaic Greeks. It was the last day of
carnival and they were singing Moriote songs, making a noise and
behaving themselves generally in a way they would not venture to do in
Greece proper. The fact is, that Karasman Oglu, who governs all this
part of the country from Pergamo north to Samos in the south and inland
to Sart and Magnesia, is an extraordinarily good administrator for a
Turk. He sees that the Greeks form the most industrious and the richest
part of the population, and that it is to his interest to protect them.
Trade is flourishing, and Greeks from other parts, such as those from
the Morea who were so noisy in the khan, come and settle under him. I am
bound to say that here, and everywhere else where they come into power,
they are insolent and insufferably vain.
On the other hand, the Turks hereabouts are a mild and hospitable but
apparently a dull race. They are even more severely taxed than the
Greeks. For instance, it was they who had to pay to buy off the raiding
pasha I spoke of, and in places remote from the seat of government they
suffer great oppression from the hands of their petty governors. Indeed
at times they have openly expressed to me their desire that the French
or the English would take possession of their empire, for that they
would be better off in the hands of anybody than in those of their own
countrymen. And nothing would be easier than to take possession of it.
In all my tour I saw only one fortress, and that a small one, quite
incapable of resisting a regular force. Moreover, it is not a cramped
country like the Morea, but perfectly open; and after you leave the
coast, which is really populous and well cultivated, it is a desert. In
nine hours' journey from Akhissar to Sart, I came across only one
village and a few Turcomans.
These Turcomans are a nomadic people. They live in tents, of which you
find perhaps twenty together, with their herds of cattle, horses, and
camels around them, and wander about following the pasture. They
consider themselves just as much part of the inhabitants as the settled
population, and are well armed and dressed. As a rule, in these parts
at any rate, they are inoffensive, but further up the country I am told
they are organised into larger bands, call themselves dervishes or
desperadoes, and if travellers do not keep together in large caravans,
attack, rob, and even sell them for slaves. I was even given the sort of
price I might be expected to fetch in that capacity, viz. from ten to
twenty pounds.
From Sumeh to Kerikahatch, and thence over a low watershed into the
valley of the Hermus and to Akhissar, where there is nothing worth
seeing. I spent the evening with Greek and Armenian merchants, very
rough company.
Went on towards Sardis. At a village on a small branch of the Hermus we
came upon a large party of Turcoman women, who had come down from the
mountains to wash. They made no attempt to avoid observation as the
Turkish women do, and some of them were exceedingly beautiful. They had
with them three men as guard, who showed no jealousy of us and very
civilly told us our way. In the afternoon we arrived at the Hermus, and
the view of the valley I shall never forget. It was a glorious country
up the river, but the cultivation and the rich population were behind
us, and in front was a continued desert. A ferry-boat running on a rope
set us over the river, and an hour later we reached Achmet Li, a
miserable village of mud cottages, and prepared to pass the night in
the wretched cafané. Happily, when it got about that we were not Turks,
the widow of a Greek papa gladly received us and lodged me well. The
raiding pasha aforesaid had passed through and burned the aga's house,
but done no other harm beyond eating up all the fowls in the place;
there was not one to be got for love or money for my supper.
Next day we got early to Sart. The neighbourhood affords the most lovely
views imaginable of distant hills. The site itself is peculiar. The
hills are wholly of fat earth, no rock seen at all, and the weather has
worn them into the most fantastic forms. Amidst them the castle,
standing at the foot of Bousdagh, is astonishingly picturesque. But the
whole is a very picture of desolation. Where the ancient Sardis stood
are now ten or twelve miserable huts. Far off across the glorious
landscape I could distinguish one solitary wretched village, and here
and there a Turcoman's tent. A veritable desert, where the soil is rich
as anyone could imagine.
Besides the fine situation there is only one other thing to notice, viz.
the Ionic temple. I spent my first day in examining it and making a
drawing of it. Only three of the five columns still standing in
Chandler's time remain erect; the other two were blown up three years
ago by a Greek who thought he might find gold in them. The whole temple
is buried many feet deep. As I wished very much to see the base of the
column, I got a Cretan--whom I found here professedly buying tobacco,
but I suspect a fugitive from his home for some murder--to dig for me. I
had to give it up after we had got down ten feet without reaching it.
One ought to be here for a month, and then, as the earth is very soft,
one could do the thing thoroughly. Nobody would interfere. I spent the
evening with the Turcomans in a tent, sitting cross-legged on a mat,
smoking. They had a bold free manner and a savage air, but they were not
uncivil to me. My janissary got into a dispute with one because he had
taken his place. He ordered him out, and the man would not go. As he and
all his companions were well armed, a fight would not have been
pleasant, and when the dispute quieted down I was not sorry.
The ruins of the comparatively modern town, especially those of a large
church, seem to consist entirely of fragments of ancient temples, some
of the bits being very fine. The castle has no remains of earlier date
than that of the Lower Empire. The more ancient fortress may have been
swept away by the torrents, which tear the soil into such strange forms,
and the whole site be changed. At any rate I could not find a scrap of
ancient wall anywhere, and the later ones are rapidly being undermined,
and totter on the edge of the precipice.
Next day we rode eastwards along the side of Bousdagh (Tmolus). In five
hours we passed only two small villages and a number of Turcoman tents,
but we met many caravans, the camels whimsically decked with feathers
and shells, and the largest male with festoons of bells as well. I was
told that the Turks were very fond of witnessing camel-fights, and that
those which I saw most handsomely dressed out were the champions at that
sport.
The houses hereabouts are all built of mud, and so full of mice that I
could not sleep in the night and was in consequence late in starting. We
continued along the great valley and came by midday to Allah Sheri
(Philadelphia), the most forlorn city ever I saw. The squalid mud houses
cover several small hills and contain a population of about a thousand
families, mostly Turks. There are twenty-four churches, of which only
five are in use, while the rest are kept sacred by occasional services.
In the shape of antiquities there is nothing to be seen. The chief
curiosity is the warm mineral spring, which smells like addled eggs and
has a taste of ink. The people about use it a good deal for scorbutic
complaints. Some travellers have spoken of having been shown a wall of
bones here. I saw nothing of the sort.
Two hours' travelling next day brought us at last to the end of the
immense plain of the Hermus, and we began to get among the mountains,
going up the east side of a steep romantic dell, the west side of which
was wonderfully rugged and wild. Beyond were mountains covered with
snow: beneath us an immeasurable giddy depth. Except a few sheep, we saw
no living thing for hours together. Once I heard some wild duck by the
torrent below. At the end of six hours we reached Derwent, a village of,
say, two hundred houses. A wretched lodging and, as there was no fowl to
be got--and that is what one depends entirely upon--no supper; and I had
to be content with smoke, coffee, and Homer. In the evening came, as
usual, a number of Turks to see the stranger. They enter, they salute
with a 'Salaam aleikum,' and sit down perhaps for hours. Their
conversation generally turns upon the stranger, with conjectures upon
his object in coming. Later at night came in the son of our host. He had
been searching for a strayed ox, and was afraid that the wolves had got
it. He examined my firearms for a long while, and admired them very
much. The Turks of this part of the country are large, handsome, very
slow in their speech, and stupid and ignorant.
Starting next morning, we began by following the course of a river till
we got on to a high level plain surrounded by formless hills--an ugly
country. We met a few Turcomans, and once I saw some ploughing. At the
end of seven hours' riding we reached the edge of the valley of the
Meander and looked over a glorious view; then downwards through
Bulladan, a village of about five hundred houses and a number of
mosques, to a village the name of which I never learnt, where we slept.
As one expects nothing of one's host but shelter, it was an unusual
hospitality in ours to give us some of his bread. It was a strange
compound, such as I had never seen before. To make it, the dough is
mixed very thin and poured on a heated copper. The result looks like
rags of coarse cloth and tastes like bad crumpets. We slept in a barn
with the horses.
Next day we descended into the plain of the Meander and crossed the
river by a bridge of four or five arches, the parapet of which is made
of the steps of a theatre. Just there was a man administering a singular
remedy to a mule which had fallen sick in the road. He had tied all four
legs together and thrown him down. Then he had cut the throat of a
sheep, and holding the mule's mouth open, let the sheep's blood flow
into it. I was assured it was an excellent medicine. From the bridge
onwards we crossed a flat till we reached the ridge, at the foot of
which is Hierapolis. It had cost me certainly a whole day more than was
necessary to get here, because Tabouk Kalise (the castle of the
cemetery), its proper name, was spelt in Chandler, Pambouk (cotton); and
when I inquired for Pambouk Kalise no one could make out what I meant,
so that practically I lost my way until I got into the valley of the
Meander. Once there, Hierapolis is a conspicuous object from a great
distance on account of the remarkable whiteness of the rock on which it
stands.
This is due to a petrification deposited by the river, which rises, a
full stream, in the city and flows over the front of the cliff. It makes
a fine cascade, and the spray of it, carried by the wind, spreads a
white coating like ice over everything it reaches. As it gradually
forms, it takes rounded shapes overlapping each other, something like
conventional clouds. The ruins of the ancient city stand on the top
above the cliff and half buried in a sea of this singular deposit. The
vast colonnades present the most extraordinary appearance. The most
magnificent are perhaps the ruins of the gymnasium, and the best
preserved the theatre, which is all perfect except the proscenium; but
perhaps what astonished me most was to find, on going out of one of the
gates, a number of tombs of various forms and sizes as complete as on
the day they were built, two thousand years ago. The style of them is
very large and magnificent. Many of the sarcophagi are eight or nine
feet long by three or four wide, and the rest in proportion. All bear
inscriptions, but the rough quality of the stone prevented my reading
them. Under the sarcophagus, and forming part of the monument, is
generally a stone bench for the friends of the deceased to sit upon and
meditate. There are some beautiful bas-reliefs in high preservation
lying exposed in the theatre. Altogether, for preservation there can be
nothing but Pompeii to compare to this place.
I did not forget to inquire for the remarkable cave in which no animal
can live, which Chandler tried to find. My guide led me to one near the
spring and told me that on certain days birds flying over it fall down,
overcome by the fumes. There, sure enough, I did find four small birds
with the bones of various other animals. If travellers had been frequent
here I could have supposed that someone had put the birds there for
sightseers to wonder at; but according to the old aga I am the first
traveller here since Chandler's time in 1765, and it seemed impossible
that it should have been done on such short notice merely to make a fool
of me.
When evening came on, I walked down again to Yemkeni where the janissary
and horses were. The aga had prepared a meal for me, and ate it with me,
sometimes tearing bits of meat off and throwing them into my plate. As
usual, all the Turks came in, in the evening, to stare.
All next day it blew and poured, but I went up to the ruins attended by
the aga's man, and worked hard all day long. I had bought a live fowl to
try Strabo's experiment of putting him into the cave; but whether it was
not really the right cave, or whether the violent wind and rain
prevented the gas having effect, at any rate the fowl was none the worse
after being exposed to it for half an hour, and we ate him with a good
appetite in the evening. Over his bones the aga grew talkative, and told
me of the real cave which was in the mountain, one hour distant. He said
that inside the cave is a bridge, and beyond that a chamber in which is
a treasure guarded by a black man. He added that he who should get the
better of that black man had need have studied and learnt much. Many and
many an adventurer, after the treasure, had died horribly in the cavern.
And so on, with all the cock-and-bull stories universal among the Turks.
But when I asked him to give me a guide to take me to the cave, he put
every sort of difficulty into the way. I should need ladders, and there
were none--horses, and there were none. In short it was quite clear he
meant to prevent my going, so I gave it up. I did so the more willingly
because I already felt exceedingly uncomfortable. The people around me
were utter savages, and the country perfectly lawless. South of the
river, in the direction of Denisli or Laodicea, it was worse; and
besides brigands, which were said to abound between Denisli and Aidin
and would oblige my taking an expensive escort, the agas themselves had
a very bad reputation for extortion. Moreover, my janissary was anxious,
because in coming to Hierapolis we were already outside the limits to
which my travelling firman referred, and he wished to get back within
them. So, all things considered, I decided to give up seeing Laodicea (I
could make out the situation of it at a very great distance) and passed
on to avoid the desert country and dangerous neighbourhood."
FOOTNOTES:
[37] Later Sir Francis Beaufort, chief hydrographer to the Navy.
[38] Since excavated at the cost of the Prussian Government.