5.
Asia Minor especially, the peninsula which lies between the Black Sea, the Archipelago, and the Mediterranean, was by nature one of the most beautiful, and had been made by art one of the most fertile of countries. It had for generations contained flourishing marts of commerce, and it had been studded with magnificent cities, the ruins of which now stand as a sepulchre of the past. No country perhaps has seen such a succession of prosperous states, and had such a host of historical reminiscences, under such distinct eras and such various distributions of territory. It is memorable in the beginning of history for its barbarian kings and nobles, whose names stand as commonplaces and proverbs of wealth and luxury. The magnificence of Pelops imparts lustre even to the brilliant dreams of the mythologist. The name of Crœsus, King of Lydia, whom I have already had occasion to mention, goes as a proverb for his enormous riches. Midas, King of Phrygia, had such abundance of the precious metals, that he was said by the poets to have the power of turning whatever he touched into gold. The tomb of Mausolus, King of Caria, was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It was the same with the Greek colonies which were scattered along its coasts; they are renowned for opulence, for philosophy, and for the liberal and the fine arts. Homer among the poets, Thales among philosophers, Herodotus, the father of history, Hippocrates, the oracle of physicians, Apelles, the prince of painters, were among their citizens; and Pythius, who presented one of the Persian Kings with a plane-tree and a vine of massive gold, was in his day, after those kings, the richest man in the known world.
Then come the many splendid cities founded by the successors of Alexander, through its extent; and the powerful and opulent kingdoms, Greek or Barbarian, of Pontus, and Bithynia, and Pergamus—Pergamus, with its library of 200,000 choice volumes. Later still, the resources of the country were so well recognised, that it was the favourite prey of the Roman statesmen, who, after involving themselves in enormous debts in the career of ambition, needed by extortion and rapine to set themselves right with their creditors. Next it became one of the first seats of Christianity; St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles relates to us the apostolic labours of St. Paul there in town and country; St. John wrote the Apocalypse to the Churches of seven of its principal cities; and St. Peter, his first Epistle to Christians scattered through its provinces. It was the home of some of the greatest Saints, Martyrs, and Doctors of the early ages: there first, in Bithynia, the power of Christianity manifested itself over a heathen population; there St. Polycarp was martyred, there St. Gregory Thamaturgus converted the inhabitants of Pontus; there St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Gregory Nyssen, St. Basil, and St. Amphilochius preached and wrote. There were held three of the first four Councils of the Church, at Chalcedon, at Ephesus, and at Nicæa, the very city afterwards profaned by the palace of the Sultan. It abounded in the gifts of nature, for food, utility, or ornament; its rivers ran with gold, its mountains yielded the most costly marbles; it had mines of copper, and especially of iron; its plains were fruitful in all kinds of grain, in broad pastures and luxuriant woods, while its hills were favourable to the olive and the vine.
Such was that region, once celebrated for its natural advantages, for its arts, its splendour, as well as for its gifts of grace; and the misery and degradation which are at present imprinted on the very face of the soil are the emblems of that worse ruin which has overtaken the souls of its children. I have already referred to the journal of Dr. Chandler, who saw it, even in its western coast, overrun by the hideous tents of the Turcomans. Another traveller of late years[49] tells us of that ancient Bithynia, which runs along the Black Sea, a beautiful and romantic country, intersected with lofty mountains and fertile valleys, and abounding in rivers and forests. The luxuriance of the pastures, he says, and the richness of the woods, often reminded him of an English gentleman's park. Such is it as nature has furnished it for the benefit of man; but he found its forests covered with straggling Turcomans and numerous flocks of goats. As he was passing through Phrygia, the inhabitants smiled, when he asked for ruins, assuring him that the whole country was overspread with them. There too again he found a great part of its face covered with the roving Turcomans, "a boisterous and ignorant race, though much more honourable and hospitable," he adds, "than the inhabitants of the towns." Mr. Alison tells us that when the English fleet, in 1801, was stationed on the southern coast, some sailors accidentally set fire to a thick wood, and the space thus left bare was studded all along with the ruins of temples and palaces.
A still more recent traveller[50] corroborates this testimony. Striking inland from Smyrna, he found "the scenery extremely beautiful, and the land," he continues, "which is always rich, would be valuable, if sufficiently cultivated, but it is much neglected." In another part of the country, he "rode for at least three miles through a ruined city, which was one pile of temples, theatres, and buildings, vying with each other in splendour." Now here, you will observe, I am not finding fault with the mere circumstance that the scenes of ancient grandeur should abound in ruins. Buildings will decay; old buildings will not answer new uses; there are ruins enough in Europe; but the force of the argument lies in this, that in these countries there are ruins and nothing else; that the old is gone, and has not been replaced by the new. So was it about Smyrna; and so too about Sardis: "Its situation," he says, "is very beautiful, but the country over which it looks is now almost deserted, and the valley is become a swamp. Its little rivers of clear water, after turning a mill or two, serve only to flood, instead of draining and beautifying the country." His descriptions of the splendour of the scenery, yet of the desolation of the land, are so frequent that I should not be able to confine my extracts within bounds, did I attempt to give them all. He speaks of his route as lying through "a rich wilderness" of ruins. Sometimes the landscape "so far exceeded the beauty of nature, as to seem the work of magic." Again, "the splendid view passed like a dream; for the continual turns in the road, and the increasing richness of the woods and vegetation, soon limited my view to a mere foreground. Nor was this without interest; on each projecting rock stood an ancient sarcophagus; and the trees half concealed the lids and broken sculpture of innumerable tombs."
The gifts of nature remain; he was especially struck with the trees. "We traversed the coast," he says, "through woods of the richest trees, the planes being the handsomest to be found in this or perhaps any other part of the world. I have never seen such stupendous arms to any trees." Everything was running wild; "the underwood was of myrtle, growing sometimes twenty feet high, the beautiful daphne laurel, and the arbutus; and they seemed contending for preëminence with the vine, clematis, and woodbine, which climbed to the very tops, and in many instances bore them down into a thicket of vegetation, impervious except to the squirrels and birds, which, sensible of their security in these retreats, stand boldly to survey the traveller." Elsewhere he found the ground carpeted with the most beautiful flowers. A Protestant Missionary,[51] in like manner, travelling in a different part of the country, speaks of the hedges of wild roses, the luxuriant gardens and fruit-trees, principally the cherry, the rich soil, the growth of beech, oak, and maple, the level meadows and swelling hills covered with the richest sward, and the rivulets of the purest water. No wonder that, as he tells us, "sitting down under a spreading walnut-tree, by the side of a murmuring mill stream, he was led by the charming woodland scenery around to reflect upon that mysterious Providence, by which so beautiful a country has been placed under such a blighting government, in the hands of so ignorant and barbarous a people."
The state of the population is in keeping with the neglected condition of the country. It is, down to the present time, wasting away; and that there are inhabitants at all seems in the main referable to merely accidental causes. On the road from Angora to Constantinople there were old people, twenty years since, who remembered as many as forty or fifty villages, where now there are none; and in the middle of the last century two hundred places had become forsaken in the tract lying between those two cities and Smyrna.[52]
This desolation is no accident of a declining empire; it dates from the very time that a Turk first came into the country, from the era of the Seljukian Sultans, eight hundred years ago. We have indirect but clear proof of it in the course of history following their expulsion from the country by the Crusaders. For a while the Greeks recovered their dominion in its western portion, and fixed their imperial residence at Nicæa, which had been the capital of the Seljukians. A vigorous prince mounted the throne, and the main object of his exertions and the special work of his reign was the recovery of the soil. We are told by an English historian,[53] that he found the most fertile lands without either cultivation or inhabitants, and he took them into his own management. It followed that, in the course of some years, the imperial domain became the granary and garden of Asia; and the sovereign made money without impoverishing his people. According to the nature of the soil, he sowed it with corn, or planted it with vines, or laid it down in grass: his pastures abounded with herds and flocks, horses and swine; and his speculation, as it may be called, in poultry was so happy, that he was able to present his empress with a crown of pearls and diamonds out of his gains. His example encouraged his nobles to imitation; and they learned to depend for their incomes on the honourable proceeds of their estates, instead of oppressing their people, and seeking favours from the court. Such was the immediate consequence when man coöperated with the bountifulness of nature in this fruitful region; and it brings out prominently by its contrast the wretchedness of the Turkish domination.