The Light.
View of Stamboul. Mosque of Validêh and Bridge.
And first of all I must speak of the light. One of my chief pleasures at Constantinople was to watch the sun rise and set from the bridge of the Validéh Sultan. At daybreak in the autumn there is almost always a light fog hanging over the Golden Horn, through which the city can only be seen indistinctly, as though one were looking through those thin gauze curtains which are lowered across the stage of a theatre in order to hide the details of some grand spectacular effect. Skutari is quite invisible; only her hills, a vague outline, can be faintly traced against the eastern sky. The bridge, as well as both banks, is deserted. Constantinople is buried in slumber, and the profound silence and solitude lend solemnity and impressiveness to the scene. Presently behind the Skutari hills the sky begins to show streaks of gold, and, one by one, against that luminous background, the inky points of the cypress trees stand out clear and defined, like a company of giants drawn up in battle-array on the heights of her vast cemetery. Now a single ray of light flashes from one end to the other of the Golden Horn, like the first faint sigh of returning consciousness, as the great city stirs and slowly awakens once more to life. Then, behind the cypresses on the Asiatic shore, a fiery eye shines forth, and immediately upon the white summits of St. Sophia’s four minarets an answering blush is seen. In rapid succession from hill to hill, from mosque to mosque, to the farthest end of the Golden Horn, every minaret turns to rose, every dome to silver. The crimson flush creeps down from one terrace to another; the light increases, the veil is lifted, and all of Stambul lies revealed, rosy and resplendent on the heights, tinged with blue and violet shadows on the water’s edge, but everywhere fresh and sparkling as though just risen from the waves. In proportion as the sun rises higher and higher the delicacy of the first coloring disappears, swallowed up in the flood of dazzling light, which becomes so white and blinding as in turn to slightly obscure everything, until toward evening, when the glorious spectacle recommences. So clear does the atmosphere then become that from Galata you can easily distinguish each separate tree on the farthermost point of Kadi-keui. The huge profile of Stambul is thrown out against the sky with such distinctness and accuracy of detail that it would be quite possible to note one by one every minaret, every spire and cypress tree, that crowns her heights from Seraglio Point to the cemetery of Eyûb. The waters of the Bosphorus and Golden Horn turn to a marvellous ultramarine; the sky, of the color of amethysts in the east, grows fiery as it reaches Stambul, lighting up the horizon with a hundred tints of crimson and gold, making one think of the first day of creation. Stambul grows dim, Galata golden, while Skutari, receiving the full blaze of the setting sun upon her thousand casements, looks like a city devoured by flames. And this is the most perfect moment in all the twenty-four hours in which to see Constantinople. It is a rapid succession of the most exquisite tints—pale gold, rose, and lilac—mingling and blending one with another on the hillsides and water’s surface, lending to first one part of the city and then to another the finishing touch to its perfect beauty, and revealing a thousand modest charms of hill- and country-side, which were too shy to thrust themselves into notice beneath the blaze of the noonday sun. It is then that you see the great melancholy suburbs losing themselves amid the shadows of the valleys—little purple-tinted hamlets smiling on the hilltops; towns and villages which languish and droop as though their life were ebbing away; others disappear from view, as you look at them, like fires which have been suddenly extinguished; others, again, apparently quite dead, come unexpectedly to life again, all aglow, and sparkle joyously for still some moments longer in the last rays of the sun. Finally, however, nothing remains but two shining summits on the Asiatic shore—Mt. Bûlgurlù and the point of the cape which guards the entrance to the Propontis. At first they are two golden coronets, then two little crimson caps, then two rubies; and then Constantinople is plunged in shadow, while ten thousand voices from ten thousand minarets announce that the sun has set.