Smyrna--The Sport of the Djerid--Journey to Ephesus--The dead City--
The desolate Country--The Ruins and Obliteration of the Temple--The
slight Impression of all on Byron
The passage in the Pylades from Athens to Smyrna was performed
without accident or adventure.
At Smyrna Lord Byron remained several days, and saw for the first
time the Turkish pastime of the Djerid, a species of tournament to
which he more than once alludes. I shall therefore describe the
amusement.
The Musselim or Governor, with the chief agas of the city, mounted on
horses superbly caparisoned, and attended by slaves, meet, commonly
on Sunday morning, on their playground. Each of the riders is
furnished with one or two djerids, straight white sticks, a little
thinner than an umbrella-stick, less at one end than at the other and
about an ell in length, together with a thin cane crooked at the
head. The horsemen, perhaps a hundred in number, gallop about in as
narrow a space as possible, throwing the djerids at each other and
shouting. Each man then selects an opponent who has darted his
djerid or is for the moment without a weapon, and rushes furiously
towards him, screaming "Olloh! Olloh!" The other flies, looking
behind him, and the instant the dart is launched stoops downwards as
low as possible, or wields his horse with inconceivable rapidity, and
picking up a djerid with his cane, or taking one from a running
slave, pursues in his turn the enemy, who wheels on the instant he
darts his weapon. The greatest dexterity is requisite in these mimic
battles to avoid the concurrence of the "javelin-darting crowd," and
to escape the random blows of the flying djerids.
Byron, having satisfied his curiosity with Smyrna, which is so like
every other Turkish town as to excite but little interest, set out
with Mr Hobhouse on the 13th of March, for Ephesus. As I soon after
passed along the same road, I shall here describe what I met with
myself in the course of the journey, it being probable that the
incidents were in few respects different from those which they
encountered.
On ascending the heights after leaving Smyrna, the road was
remarkable in being formed of the broken relics of ancient edifices
partly macadamised. On the brow of the hill I met a numerous caravan
of camels coming from the interior of Asia. These ships of the
desert, variously loaded, were moving slowly to their port, and it
seemed to me as I rode past them, that the composed docile look of
the animals possessed a sort of domesticated grace which lessened the
effect of their deformity.
A caravan, owing to the oriental dresses of the passengers and
attendants, with the numerous grotesque circumstances which it
presents to the stranger, affords an amusing spectacle. On the back
of one camel three or four children were squabbling in a basket; in
another cooking utensils were clattering; and from a crib on a third
a young camel looked forth inquiringly on the world: a long
desultory train of foot-passengers and cattle brought up the rear.
On reaching the summit of the hills behind Smyrna the road lies
through fields and cotton-grounds, well cultivated and interspersed
with country houses. After an easy ride of three or four hours I
passed through the ruins of a considerable Turkish town, containing
four or five mosques, one of them, a handsome building, still entire;
about twenty houses or so might be described as tenantable, but only
a place of sepulchres could be more awful: it had been depopulated
by the plague--all was silent, and the streets were matted with thick
grass. In passing through an open space, which reminded me of a
market-place, I heard the cuckoo with an indescribable sensation of
pleasure mingled with solemnity. The sudden presence of a raven at a
bridal banquet could scarcely have been a greater phantasma.
Proceeding briskly from this forsaken and dead city, I arrived in the
course of about half an hour at a coffee-house on the banks of a
small stream, where I partook of some refreshment in the shade of
three or four trees, on which several storks were conjugally building
their nests. While resting there, I became interested in their work,
and observed, that when any of their acquaintances happened to fly
past with a stick, they chattered a sort of How-d'ye-do to one
another. This civility was so uniformly and reciprocally performed,
that the politeness of the stork may be regarded as even less
disputable than its piety.
The road from that coffee-house lies for a mile or two along the side
of a marshy lake, the environs of which are equally dreary and
barren; an extensive plain succeeds, on which I noticed several
broken columns of marble, and the evident traces of an ancient
causeway, which apparently led through the water. Near the extremity
of the lake was another small coffee-house, with a burial-ground and
a mosque near it; and about four or five miles beyond I passed a
spot, to which several Turks brought a coffinless corpse, and laid it
on the grass while they silently dug a grave to receive it.
The road then ascended the hills on the south side of the plain, of
which the marshy lake was the centre, and passed through a tract of
country calculated to inspire only apprehension and melancholy. Not
a habitation nor vestige of living man was in sight, but several
cemeteries, with their dull funereal cypresses and tombstones served
to show that the country had once been inhabited.
Just as the earliest stars began to twinkle I arrived at a third
coffee-house on the roadside, with a little mosque before it, a
spreading beech tree for travellers to recline under in the spring,
and a rude shed for them in showers or the more intense sunshine of
summer. Here I rested for the night, and in the morning at daybreak
resumed my journey.
After a short ride I reached the borders of the plain of Ephesus,
across which I passed along a road rudely constructed, and raised
above the marsh, consisting of broken pillars, entablatures, and
inscriptions, at the end of which two other paths diverge; one
strikes off to the left, and leads over the Cayster by a bridge above
the castle of Aiasaluk--the other, leading to the right, or west,
goes directly to Scala Nuova, the ancient Neapolis. By the latter
Byron and his friend proceeded towards the ferry, which they crossed,
and where they found the river about the size of the Cam at
Cambridge, but more rapid and deeper. They then rode up the south
bank, and about three o'clock in the afternoon arrived at Aiasaluk,
the miserable village which now represents the city of Ephesus.
Having put up their beds in a mean khan, the only one in the town,
they partook of some cold provisions which they had brought with them
on a stone seat by the side of a fountain, on an open green near to a
mosque, shaded with tall cypresses. During their repast a young Turk
approached the fountain, and after washing his feet and hands,
mounted a flat stone, placed evidently for the purpose on the top of
the wall surrounding the mosque, and devoutly said his prayers,
totally regardless of their appearance and operations.
The remainder of the afternoon was spent in exploring the ruins of
Aiasaluk, and next morning they proceeded to examine those of the
castle, and the mouldering magnificence of Ephesus. The remains of
the celebrated temple of Diana, one of the wonders of the ancient
world, could not be satisfactorily traced; fragments of walls and
arches, which had been plated with marble, were all they could
discover, with many broken columns that had once been mighty in their
altitude and strength: several fragments were fifteen feet long, and
of enormous circumference. Such is the condition of that superb
edifice, which was, in its glory, four hundred and twenty feet long
by two hundred and twenty feet broad, and adorned with more than a
hundred and twenty columns sixty feet high.
When the travellers had satisfied their curiosity, if that can be
called satisfaction which found no entire form, but saw only the
rubbish of desolation and the fragments of destruction, they returned
to Smyrna.
The investigation of the ruins of Ephesus was doubtless interesting
at the time, but the visit produced no such impression on the mind of
Byron as might have been expected. He never directly refers to it in
his works: indeed, after Athens, the relics of Ephesus are things
but of small import, especially to an imagination which, like that of
the poet, required the action of living characters to awaken its
dormant sympathies.