LETTER XXIX.
The Dardanelles—Visit from the Pacha—His Delight at hearing the Piano—Turkish Fountains—Caravan of Mules laden with Grapes—Turkish Mode of Living—Houses, Cafés, and Women—The Mosque and the Muezzin—American Consul of the Dardanelles, another “Caleb Quotem.”
Coast of Asia.—We have lain in the mouth of the Dardanelles sixteen mortal days, waiting for a wind. Like Don Juan (who passed here on his way to Constantinople)—
“Another time we might have liked to see ’em,
But now are not much pleased with Cape Sigæum.”
An occasional trip with the boats to the watering-place, a Turkish bath, and a stroll in the bazaar of the town behind the castle, gazing with a glass at the tombs of Ajax and Achilles, and the long, undulating shores of Asia, eating often and sleeping much, are the only appliances to our philosophy. One cannot always be thinking of Hero and Leander, though he lie in the Hellespont.
A merchant-brig from Smyrna is anchored just astern of us, waiting like ourselves for this eternal northeaster to blow itself out. She has forty or fifty passengers for Constantinople, among whom are the wife of an American merchant (a Greek lady), and Mr. Schauffler, a missionary, in whom I recognised a quondam fellow-student. They were nearly starved on board the brig, as she was provisioned but for a few days, and the commodore has courteously offered them a passage in the frigate. Fifty or sixty sail lie below Castle Europe, in the same predicament. With the “cap of King Erricus,” this cruising, pleasant as it is, would be a thought pleasanter to my fancy.
Still wind-bound. The angel that
“Looked o’er my almanac
And crossed out my ill-days,”
suffered a week or so to escape him here. Not that the ship is not pleasant enough, and the climate deserving of its Sybarite fame, and the sunsets and stars as much brighter than those of the rest of the world, as Byron has described them to be (vide letter to Leigh Hunt), but life has run in so deep a current with me of late, that the absence of incident seems like water without wine. The agreeable stir of travel, the incomplete adventure, the change of costumes and scenery, the busy calls upon the curiosity and the imagination, have become, in a manner, very breath to me. Hitherto upon the cruise, we have scarce ever been more than one or two days at a time out of port. Elba, Sicily, Naples, Vienna, the Ionian Isles, and the various ports of Greece have come and gone so rapidly, and so entirely without exertion of my own, that I seem to have lived in a magic panorama. After dinner on one day I visit a city here, and the day or two after, lounging and reading and sleeping meanwhile quietly at home, I find myself rising from table, hundreds of miles farther to the north or east, and another famous city before me, having taken no care, and felt no motion, nor encountered danger or fatigue. A summer cruise in the Mediterranean is certainly the perfection of sight-seeing. With a sea as smooth as a river, and cities of interest, classical and mercantile, everywhere on the lee, I can conceive of no class of persons to whom it would not be delightful. A company of pleasure, in a private vessel, would see all Greece and Italy with less trouble and expense than is common on a trip to the lakes.
“All hands up anchor!” The dog-vane points at last to Constantinople. The capstan is manned, the sails loosed, the quarter-master at the wheel, and the wind freshens every moment from the “sweet south.” “Heave round merrily!” The anchor is dragged in by this rushing Hellespont, and holds on as if the bridge of Xerxes were tangled about the flukes. “Up she comes at last,” and, yielding to her broad canvass, the gallant frigate begins to make headway against the current. There is nothing in the whole world of senseless matter, so like a breathing creature as a ship! The energy of her motion, the beauty of her shape and contrivance, and the ease with which she is managed by the one mind upon her quarter-deck, to whose voice she is as obedient as the courser to the rein, inspire me with daily admiration. I have been four months a guest in this noble man-of-war, and to this hour, I never set my foot on her deck without a feeling of fresh wonder. And then Cooper’s novels read in a ward-room as grapes eat in Tuscany. It were missing one of the golden leaves of a life not to have thumbed them on a cruise.
The wind has headed us off again, and we have dropped anchor just below the castles of the Dardanelles. We have made but eight miles, but we have new scenery from the ports, and that is something to a weary eye. I was as tired of “the shores of Ilion” as ever was Ulysses. The hills about our present anchorage are green and boldly marked, and the frowning castles above us give that addition to the landscape which is alone wanting on the Hudson. Sestos and Abydos are six or seven miles up the stream. The Asian shore (I should have thought it a pretty circumstance, once, to be able to set foot either in Europe or Asia in five minutes) is enlivened by numbers of small vessels, tracking up with buffaloes, against wind and tide. And here we lie, says the old pilot, without hope till the moon changes. The “fickle moon,” quotha! I wish my friends were half as constant!
The Pacha of the Dardanelles has honoured us with a visit. He came in a long caique, pulled by twenty stout rascals, his Excellency of “two tails” sitting on a rich carpet on the bottom of the boat, with his boy of a year old in the same uniform as himself, and his suite of pipe and slipper-bearers, dwarf and executioner, sitting cross-legged about him. He was received with the guard and all the honour due to his rank. His face is that of a cold, haughty, and resolute, but well-born man, and his son is like him. He looked at everything attentively, without expressing any surprise, till he came to the pianoforte, which one of the ladies played to his undisguised delight. It was the first he had ever seen. He inquired, through his interpreter, if she had not been all her life in learning.
The poet says, “The seasons of the year come in like masquers.” To one who had made their acquaintance in New-England, most of the months would literally pass incog. in Italy. But here is honest October, the same merry old gentleman, though I meet him in Asia, and I remember him, last year, at the baths of Lucca, as unchanged as here. It has been a clear, bright, invigorating day, with a vitality in the air as rousing to the spirits as a blast from the “horn of Astolpho.” I can remember just such a day ten years ago. It is odd how a little sunshine will cling to the memory when loves and hates that, in their time, convulsed the very soul, are so easily forgotten.
We heard yesterday that there was a Turkish village seven or eight miles in the mountains on the Asian side, and, as a variety to the promenade on the quarter-deck, a ramble was proposed to it.
We landed, this morning, on the bold shore of the Dardanelles, and, climbing up the face of a sand-hill, struck across a broad plain, through bush and brier, for a mile. On the edge of a ravine we found a pretty road, half-hedged over with oak and hemlock, and a mounted Turk, whom we met soon after, with a gun across his pummel, and a goose looking from his saddle-bag, directed us to follow it till we reached the village.
It was a beautiful path, flecked with the shade of leaves of all the variety of eastern trees, and refreshed with a fountain at every mile. About half way we stopped at a spring welling from a rock, under a large fig-tree, from which the water poured, as clear as crystal, into seven tanks, and one after the other rippling away from the last into a wild thicket, whence a stripe of brighter green marked its course down the mountain. It was a spot worthy of Tempé. We seated ourselves on the rim of the rocky basin, and, with a drink of bright water, and a half hour’s repose, re-commenced our ascent, blessing the nymph of the fount, like true pilgrims of the East.
A few steps beyond we met a caravan of the pacha’s tithe-gatherers, with mules laden with grapes; the turbaned and showily-armed drivers, as they came winding down the dell, produced the picturesque effect of a theatrical ballet. They laid their hands on their breasts, with grave courtesy, as they approached, and we helped ourselves to the ripe, blushing clusters, as the panniers went by, with Arcadian freedom.
We reached the summit of the ridge a little before noon, and turned our faces back for a moment to catch the cool wind from the Hellespont. The Dardanelles came winding out from the hills, just above Abydos, and sweeping past the upper castles of Europe and Asia, rushed down by Tenedos into the Archipelago. Perhaps twenty miles of its course lay within our view. Its colours were borrowed from the divine sky above, and the rainbow is scarce more varied or brighter. The changing purple and blue of the mid-stream, specked with white crests, the chrysoprase green of the shallows, and the dyes of the various depths along the shore, gave it the appearance of a vein of transparent marble, inlaid through the valley. The frigate looked like a child’s boat on its bosom. To our left, the tombs of Ajax and Achilles were just distinguishable in the plains of the Scamander, and Troy (if Troy ever stood) stood back from the sea, and the blue-wreathed isles of the Archipelago bounded the reach of the eye. It was a view that might “cure a month’s grief in a day.”
We descended now into a kind of cradle valley, yellow with rich vineyards. It was alive with people gathering in the grapes. The creaking wagons filled the road, and shouts and laughter rang over the mountain-sides merrily. The scene would have been Italian, but for the turbans peering out everywhere from the leaves, and those diabolical-looking buffaloes in the wagons. The village was a mile or two before us, and we loitered on, entering here and there a vineyard, where the only thing evidently grudged us was our peep at the women. They scattered like deer as we stepped over the walls.
Near the village we found a grave Turk, of whom one of the officers made some inquiries, which were a part of our errand to the mountains. It may spoil the sentiment of my description, but, in addition to the poetry of the ramble, we were to purchase beef for the mess. His bullocks were out at grass (feeding in pastoral security, poor things!), and he invited us to his house, while he sent his boy to drive them in. I recognised them, when they came, as two handsome steers, which had completed the beauty of an open glade, in the centre of a clump of forest trees, on our route. The pleasure they have afforded to the eye will be repeated upon the palate—a double destiny not accorded to all beautiful creatures.
Our host led us up a flight of rough stone steps to the second story of his house, where an old woman sat upon her heels, rolling out paste, and a younger one nursed a little Turk at her bosom. They had, like every man, woman, or child I have seen in this country, superb eyes and noses. No chisel could improve the meanest of them in these features. Our friend’s wife seemed ashamed to be caught with her face uncovered, but she offered us cushions on the floor before she retired, and her husband followed up her courtesy with his pipe.
We went thence to the café, where a bubbling hookah, a cup of coffee, and a divan, refreshed us a little from our fatigues. While the rest of the party were lingering over their pipes, I took a turn through the village in search of the house of the Aga. After strolling up and down the crooked streets for half an hour, a pretty female figure, closely enveloped in her veil, and showing, as she ran across the street, a dainty pair of feet in small yellow slippers, attracted me into the open court of the best-looking house in the village. The lady had disappeared, but a curious-looking carriage, lined with rich Turkey carpeting and cushions, and covered with red curtains, made to draw close in front, stood in the centre of the court. I was going up to examine it, when an old man, with a beard to his girdle, and an uncommonly rich turban, stepped from the house and motioned me angrily away. A large wolf-dog, which he held by the collar, added emphasis to his command, and I retreated directly. A giggle and several female voices from the closely-latticed window, rather aggravated the mortification. I had intruded on the premises of the Aga, a high offence in Turkey, when a woman is in the case.
It was “deep i’ the afternoon,” when we arrived at the beach, and made signal for a boat. We were on board as the sky kindled with the warm colours of an Asian sunset—a daily offset to our wearisome detention which goes far to keep me in temper. My fear is that the commodore’s patience is not “so good a continuer” as this “vento maledetto,” as the pilot calls it, and in such a case I lose Constantinople most provokingly.
Walked to the Upper Castle Asia, some eight miles above our anchorage. This is the main town on the Dardanelles, and contains forty or fifty thousand inhabitants. Sestos and Abydos are a mile or two farther up the Strait.
We kept along the beach for an hour or two, passing occasionally a Turk on horseback, till we were stopped by a small and shallow creek without a bridge, just on the skirts of the town. A woman with one eye peeping from her veil, dressed in a tunic of fine blue cloth, stood at the head of a large drove of camels on the other side, and a beggar with one eye, smoked his pipe on the sand at a little distance. The water was knee-deep, and we were hesitating on the brink, when the beggar offered to carry us across on his back—a task he accomplished (there were six of us) without taking his pipe from his mouth.
I tried in vain to get a peep at the camel-driver’s wife or daughter, but she seemed jealous of showing even her eyebrow, and I followed on to the town. The Turks live differently from every other people, I believe. You walk through their town and see every individual in it, except perhaps the women of the pacha. Their houses are square boxes, the front side of which lifts on a hinge in the day-time, exposing the whole interior, with its occupants squatted in the corners or on the broad platform where their trades are followed. They are scarce larger than boxes in the theatre, and the roof projects into the middle of the street, meeting that of the opposite neighbour, so that the pavement between is always dark and cool. The three or four Turkish towns I have seen, have the appearance of cabins thrown up hastily after a fire. You would not suppose they were intended to last more than a month at the farthest.
We roved through the narrow streets an hour or more, admiring the fine bearded old Turks, smoking cross-legged in the cafés, the slipper-makers with their gay morocco wares in goodly rows around them, the wily Jews with their high caps and caftans (looking, crouched among their merchandise, like the “venders of old bottles and abominable lies,” as they are drawn in the plays of Queen Elizabeth’s time), the muffled and gliding spectres of the Moslem women, and the livelier-footed Greek girls, in their velvet jackets and braided hair, and by this time we were kindly disposed to our dinners.
On our way to the consul’s, where we were to dine, we passed a mosque. The minaret (a tall peaked tower, about of the shape and proportions of a pencil-case) commanded a view down the principal streets; and a stout fellow, with a sharp clear voice, leaned over the balustrade at the top, crying out the invitation to prayer in a long drawling sing-song, that must have been audible on the other side of the Hellespont. Open porches, supported by a paling, extended all around the church, and the floors were filled with kneeling Turks, with their pistols and ataghans lying beside them. I had never seen so picturesque a congregation. The slippers were left in hundreds at the threshold, and the bare and muscular feet and legs, half concealed by the full trowsers, supported as earnest a troop of worshippers as ever bent forehead to the ground. I left them rising from a flat prostration, and hurried after my companions to dinner.
Our consul of the Dardanelles is an American. He is absent just now, in search of a runaway female slave of the sultan’s; and his wife, a gracious Italian, full of movement and hospitality, does the honours of his house in his absence. He is a physician as well as consul and slave-catcher, and the presents of a hand-organ, a French clock, and a bronze standish, rather prove him to be a favourite with the “brother of the sun.”
We were smoking the hookah after dinner, when an intelligent-looking man, of fifty or so, came in to pay us a visit. He is at present an exile from Constantinople, by order of the Grand Seignior, because a brother physician, his friend, failed in an attempt to cure one of the favourites of the imperial harem! This is what might be called “sympathy upon compulsion.” It is unnecessary, one would think, to make friendship more dangerous than common human treachery renders it already.