LETTER XLIV.
Farewell to Constantinople—Europe and the East compared—The Departure—Smyrna, the great Mart for Figs—An Excursion into Asia Minor—Travelling Equipments—Character of the Hajjis—Encampment of Gipsies—A Youthful Hebe—Note—Horror of the Turks for the “Unclean Animal”—An Anecdote.
I have spent the last day or two in farewell visits to my favourite haunts in Constantinople. I galloped up the Bosphorus, almost envying les ames damnées that skim so swiftly and perpetually from the Symplegades to Marmora, and from Marmora back to the Symplegades. I took a caique to the Valley of Sweet Waters, and rambled away an hour on its silken sward. I lounged a morning in the bazaars, smoked a parting pipe with my old Turk in the bezestein, and exchanged a last salaam with the venerable Armenian bookseller, still poring over his illuminated Hafiz. And last night, with the sundown boat waiting at the pier, I loitered till twilight in the small and elevated cemetery between Galata and Pera, and, with feelings of even painful regret, gazed my last upon the matchless scene around me. In the words of the eloquent author of “Anastasius,” when taking the same farewell, “For the last time, my eye wandered over the dimpled hills, glided along the winding waters, and dived into the deep and delicious dells, in which branch out its jagged shores. Reverting from these smiling outlets of its sea-beat suburbs to its busy centre, I surveyed, in slow succession, every chaplet of swelling cupolas, every grove of slender minarets, and every avenue of glittering porticoes, whose pinnacles dart their golden shafts from between the dark cypress-trees into the azure sky. I dwelt on them as on things I never was to behold more; and not until the evening had deepened the veil it cast over the varied scene from orange to purple, and from purple to the sable hue of night, did I tear myself away from the impressive spot. I then bade the city of Constantine farewell for ever, descended the high-crested hill, stepped into the heaving boat, turned my back upon the shore, and sank my regrets in the sparkling wave, across which the moon had already flung a trembling bar of silvery light, pointing my way, as it were, to other unknown regions.”
There are few intellectual pleasures like that of finding our own thoughts and feelings well described by another!
I certainly would not live in the East; and when I sum up its inconveniences and deprivations to which the traveller from Europe, with his refined wants, is subjected, I marvel at the heart-ache with which I turn my back upon it, and the deep dye it has infused into my imagination. Its few peculiar luxuries do not compensate for the total absence of comfort; its lovely scenery cannot reconcile you to wretched lodgings; its picturesque costumes and poetical people, and golden sky, fine food for a summer’s fancy as they are, cannot make you forget the civilised pleasures you abandon for them—the fresh literature, the arts and music, the refined society, the elegant pursuits, and the stirring intellectual collision of the cities of Europe.
Yet the world contains nothing like Constantinople! If we could compel all our senses into one, and live by the pleasures of the eye, it were a paradise untranscended. The Bosphorus—the superb, peculiar, incomparable Bosphorus! the dream-like, fairy-built seraglio! the sights within the city so richly strange, and the valleys and streams around it so exquisitely fair! the voluptuous softness of the dark eyes haunting your every step on shore, and the spirit-like swiftness and elegance of your darting caique upon the waters! In what land is the priceless sight such a treasure? Where is the fancy so delicately and divinely pampered?
Every heave at the capstan-bars drew upon my heart; and when the unwilling anchor at last let go its hold, and the frigate swung free with the outward current, I felt as if, in that moment, I had parted my hold upon a land of faëry. The dark cypresses and golden pinnacles of Seraglio Point, and the higher shafts of Sophia’s sky-touching minarets were the last objects in my swiftly-receding eye, and, in a short hour or two, the whole bright vision had sunk below the horizon.
We crossed Marmora, and shot down the rapid Dardanelles in as many hours as a passage up had occupied days, and, rounding the coast of Anatolia, entered between Mitylene and the Asian shore, and, on the third day, anchored in the bay of Smyrna.
“Everybody knows Smyrna,” says MacFarlane, “it is such a place for figs!” It is a low-built town, at the head of the long gulf, which bears its name, and, with the exception of the high rock immediately over it, topped by the ruins of an old castle, said to embody in its walls the ancient Christian church, it has no very striking features. Extensive gardens spread away on every side, and, without exciting much of your admiration for its beauty, there is a look of peace and rural comfort about the neighbourhood that affects the mind pleasantly.
Almost immediately on my arrival, I joined a party for a few days’ tour in Asia Minor. We were five, and, with a baggage-horse, and a mounted suridjee, our caravan was rather respectable. Our appointments were orientally simple. We had each a Turkish bed (alias, a small carpet), a nightcap, and a “copy-hold” upon a pair of saddle-bags, containing certain things forbidden by the Koran, and therefore not likely to be found by the way. Our attendant was a most ill-favoured Turk, whose pilgrimage to Mecca (he was a hajji, and wore a green turban) had, at least, imparted no sanctity to his visage. If he was not a rogue, nature had mis-labelled him, and I shelter my want of charity under the Arabic proverb: “Distrust thy neighbour if he has made a hajji; if he has made two, make haste to leave thy house.”
We wound our way slowly out of the narrow and ill-paved streets of Smyrna, and passing through the suburban gardens, yellow with lemons and oranges, crossed a small bridge over the Hermus. This is the favourite walk of the Smyrniotes, and if its classic river, whose “golden sands” (here, at least), are not golden, and its “Bath of Diana” near by, whose waters would scarce purify her “silver bow,” are something less than their sounding names; there is a cool, dark cemetery beyond, less famous, but more practicable for sentiment, and many a shadowy vine and drooping tree in the gardens around, that might recompense lovers, perhaps, for the dirty labyrinth of the intervening suburb.
We spurred away over the long plain of Hadjilar, leaving to the right and left the pretty villages, ornamented by the summer residences of the wealthy merchants of Smyrna, and in two or three hours reached a small lone café, at the foot of its bounding range of mountains. We dismounted here to breathe our horses, and while coffee was preparing, I discovered, in a green hollow hard by, a small encampment of gipsies. With stones in our hands, as the caféjee told us the dogs were troublesome, we walked down into the little round-bottomed dell, a spot selected with “a lover’s eye for nature,” and were brought to bay by a dozen noble shepherd-dogs, within a few yards of their outer tent.
The noise brought out an old sun-burnt woman, and two or three younger ones, with a troop of boys, who called in the dogs, and invited us kindly within their limits. The tents were placed in a half circle, with their doors inward, and were made with extreme neatness. There were eight or nine of them, very small and low, with round tops, the cloth stretched tightly over an inner frame, and bound curiously down on the outside with beautiful wicker-work. The curtains at the entrance were looped up to admit the grateful sun, and the compactly-arranged interiors lay open to our prying curiosity. In the rounded corner farthest from the door, lay uniformly the same goat-skin beds, flat on the ground, and in the centre of most of them, stood a small loom, at which the occupant plied her task like an automaton, not betraying by any sign a consciousness of our presence. They sat cross-legged like the Turks, and had all a look of habitual sternness, which, with their thin, strongly-marked gipsy features, and wild eyes, gave them more the appearance of men. It was the first time I had ever remarked such a character upon a class of female faces, and I should have thought I had mistaken their sex, if their half-naked figures had not put it beyond a doubt. The men were probably gone to Smyrna, as none were visible in the encampment. As we were about returning, the curtain of the largest tent, which had been dropped on our entrance, was lifted cautiously, by a beautiful girl, of perhaps thirteen, who, not remarking that I was somewhat in the rear of my companions, looked after them a moment, and then fastening back the dingy folds by a string, returned to her employment of swinging an infant in a small wicker hammock, suspended in the centre of the tent. Her dark, but prettily-rounded arm, was decked with a bracelet of silver pieces, and just between two of the finest eyes I ever saw, was suspended by a yellow thread, one of the small gold coins of Constantinople. Her softly-moulded bust was entirely bare, and might have served for the model of a youthful Hebe. A girdle round her waist sustained loosely a long pair of full Turkish trousers, of the colour and fashion usually worn by women in the East, and caught over her hip, hung suspended by its fringe the truant shawl that had been suffered to fall from her shoulders and expose her guarded beauty. I stood admiring her a full minute, before I observed a middle-aged woman in the opposite corner, who, bending over her work, was fortunately as late in observing my intrusive presence. As I advanced half a step, however, my shadow fell into the tent, and starting with surprise, she rose and dropped the curtain.
We remounted, and I rode on, thinking of the vision of loveliness I was leaving in that wild dell. We travel a great way to see hills and rivers, thought I, but, after all, a human being is a more interesting object than a mountain. I shall remember the little gipsy of Hadjilar, long after I have forgotten Hermus and Sypilus.
Our road dwindled to a mere bridle-path, as we advanced, and the scenery grew wild and barren. The horses were all sad stumblers, and the uneven rocks gave them every apology for coming down whenever they could forget the spur, and so we entered the broad and green valley of Yackerhem (I write it as I heard it pronounced), and drew up at the door of a small hovel, serving the double purpose of a café and a guard-house.
A Turkish officer of the old régime, turbanned and cross-legged, and armed with pistols and ataghan, sat smoking on one side the brazier of coals, and the caféjee exercised his small vocation on the other. Before the door, a raised platform of greensward and a marble slab, facing toward Mecca, indicated the place for prayer; and a dashing rider of a Turk, who had kept us company from Smyrna, flying past us and dropping to the rear alternately, had taken off his slippers at the moment we arrived, and was commencing his noon devotions.
We gathered round our commissary’s saddle-bags and shocked our Mussulman friends, by producing the unclean beast[[18]] and the forbidden liquor, which, with the delicious Turkey coffee, never better than in these way-side hovels, furnished forth a traveller’s meal.
| [18] | Talking of hams, two of the Sultan’s chief eunuchs applied to an English physician, a friend of mine at Constantinople, to accompany them on board the American frigate. I engaged to wait on board for them on a certain day, but they did not make their appearance. They gave, as their apology, that they could not defile themselves by entering a ship polluted by the presence of that unclean animal, the hog. |