CHAPTER VI—ACROSS THE BLACK SEA.
A Visit to a Russian Police Office—Smith, and what he did—A bad lot of passports—A race after a Governor in a Drosky—More Backsheesh—Delicate administration of a bribe—An obliging subordinate—Attempt at a swindle—Scraping an acquaintance—High life on the Black Sea—Muscovite ladies—Sunrise on the Euxine—Worshipping the Sun—Stamboul—Passing Quarantine—On the Bosphorus—A magnificent spectacle—The Castle of Europe—Palaces and Villas—Domes and Minarets—The Golden Horn—In front of Constantinople—Rapacity of Boatmen—Turkish Thieves—Streets of the City.
THERE is nothing very interesting about Odessa, for the reason that it is a place of no antiquity.
At the end of the last century it was a Tartar village bearing the name of Hadji Bey, and containing a dozen houses and a small fortress of Turkish construction. Now it is a grand city with one-hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, and having an extensive commerce. Ships of all nations lie at its wharves, and you see English, French, American, and nearly all other foreign names among the merchants established there. Its greatest export-commerce is in wheat, which goes from Odessa to all parts of the Mediterranean and also to England.
The Black Sea wheat formerly found a market in America, but we have changed all that with our immense grain production in the West and California.
It was no small matter to get out of Russia. I sent the passports of our party to the police-bureau on Thursday—two days before the time set for our departure—and was told that they were en règle for the journey to Constantinople. Saturday morning I paid a visit of politeness to the American consul, Mr. Smith, and just as I was leaving him he asked if he could be of any service.
“Thank you,” I replied, “I know of nothing you can do for me except to follow me with your good wishes. I don’t want to borrow any money nor obtain an introduction to any official.”
“Have you arranged your passports?”
“O, yes,” I answered with a confident smile. “I have travelled too much to neglect any of the formalities. The clerk of the hotel sent our passports to the police and had the proper visas attached.”
As I spoke I took my passport from my pocket, and handed it over with an air of triumph. He unfolded the document and examined it. His turn was to smile now, and he “smole.”
“All wrong, my dear sir,” he said, “there is no visa for departure; nothing but the visa pour entrer and the visa de séjour.”
Here was a pretty caldron of piscatorial products. It was one o’clock, and the steamer was to sail at four; it was Saturday afternoon, and the police-bureau closed at twelve o’clock on the last day of the week.
“I will endeavor to get you out of your trouble,” said the kind hearted Smith—I wish all Smiths were like him and the world would then be much better off than it is—“we will jump into a drosky and do some fast driving; and as I know the Governor and the Police-Master I think the matter can be fixed.”
We hired a drosky and told the driver to put in his best licks and he might expect something to get drunk on. This appeal to the noble sentiments of an isvoshchik’s heart roused his ambition and he put in the “licks” aforesaid, with a whip weighing about three pounds in the handle and two in the lash.
We went forward as if impelled by the boot of His Brimstonic Majesty, and as the narrow drosky bounded from side to side the two passengers had hard work to hold on.
We were soon at the Governor’s, and entered a room filled with a crowd of all sorts of people, some dirty, some dirtier, and some dirtiest, and a few looking clean and respectable. The Consul gave his name and rank to a soldier who disappeared through a narrow doorway and soon returned to escort us into the gubernatorial presence.
The governor was a well-proportioned man of fifty-five or sixty years, with white hair, a clean-shaven face, and regular, pleasing features. He was in civilian dress, and his manners were easy and unaffected like those of the higher class of Russians generally. In his presence one might easily forget the official in the kind and courteous gentleman. If he had an iron hand, it was most skillfully covered with velvet. Napoleon said, “Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tartar.” That may be so, but it is unnecessary to indulge in scratching when the Russian is as amiable as we generally find him. It is like removing the paint from a beautiful picture to get at the rough canvas.
The case was stated to His Excellency, and we obtained a note requesting the police to attend to the matter and put the passports in order, if there was no objection. “I shall be at the steamer,” said the Governor, “as my sister is to be one of the passengers, and should there be any trouble, please tell me.” We bowed ourselves out and were off.
The Turkish consulate was close at hand, and so we halted there and obtained the visa to enter the Ottoman Empire, not necessary, but a good thing to have. It might be compared to some of the quack medicines of the present day—warranted not to harm the patient even if they do not benefit him.
At the police-bureau the chief was absent, but his second in command happened to be in. He spoke French fluently, and when I had told him that it was no fault of mine, but the carelessness or downright dishonesty of the hotel-clerk that had brought us into trouble, he said he would see what could be done. The office was technically “closed,” but the Consul had influence enough to gain admission, and I had faith that blarney and “backsheesh,” especially the latter, would do the rest.
We were referred to a subordinate, a seedy and decayed party who looked as if he had a large family and proportionately small pay. I thought here was a case of putting something where it would do the most good, and intimated as much to the Consul.
“Yes, that will be right,” replied Smith; “do as you please, but I must not know about it.”
While the subordinate was intimating that office hours were over and he could do nothing, I handed him the three passports and with them as many roubles.
As his fingers closed on them he smiled sweetly, and no doubt thought of his family and the comforts this honestly earned money would procure for them.
He opened one of the passports, and with an exclamation that amounted to “Really I did not understand how it was,” sat down at his desk.
In a quarter of an hour the passports were all en regle; I was happy, Smith was happy, and the subordinate was happy. We went to the hotel, where the Consul took a parting glass of wine with us, received our thanks and we his blessing. Then we paid our bill and went to the steamer.
I am unable to say whether the clerk of the hotel was grossly careless or dishonest. Had we gone on board with our passports as he returned them to us, we should have been liable to detention until the next steamer, three days later. In that case the hotel might have profited by our enforced delay, and I have a strong suspicion that the fellow had an eye to business and deliberately deceived us. I expressed my opinion of the whole affair, and we did not part friends.
The steamer sailed exactly thirty-five seconds after her advertised time, an example of promptness worthy of imitation. She was an English-built ship, belonging to the Russian Company of Navigation and Commerce, and rejoiced in the name of Elborus. Officers and crew were Russian, with the possible exception of the chief engineer.
We had a motley crowd of passengers in the cabin. We were three Americans, and there was a fourth—a native of the land of the free—a woman whose talkative power was sufficient to bore a tunnel through Mount Washington, and whose mission was literature and matrimony. She was en route to Constantinople to marry a Turk, but I afterwards learned that she changed her mind and married a Greek. Then there were two or three Englishmen travelling for pleasure, several Swiss, German, and French merchants and commercial travellers, all of them chatty and most of them agreeable, and there were half a dozen Russians, mostly of the gentler sex.
We had not been many hours at sea before a majority of the passengers were on speaking terms, and even endeavoring to make the time pass pleasantly. There was no distinction of age or sex in conversation; everybody was polite, and nobody took offence at being addressed without the formality of an introduction. Nowhere in the world will you find travellers more civil to each other than on the steamers which plough the waters of the Orient.
Among the Russian passengers were three ladies (mother and daughters) from St. Petersburgh, sister and nieces of the Governor of Odessa. The younger of the daughters was a Lady of Honor at the court of the Empress, and the family evidently belonged to the haute noblesse of Russia.
If anybody fancies that the high society of Russia is at all “stuck up,” like some of our American aristocrats, he would have been enlightened very materially had he made the voyage with that party. There was no forwardness or pertness on the part of the young ladies, neither was there any frigid reserve or mauvaise honte. They conversed easily and with perfect selfpossession, and when one of the passengers produced a variety of mechanical puzzles for the amusement of the party, they readily joined in the sport. If they were brought up at boarding and finishing schools I must admit that the Russian educational establishments are more successful in their work than the majority of their American and English rivals.
The deck was crowded with third-class passengers, the majority of them being Russian pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. Two priests were with them, and they held frequent service, in which all the members of their flock joined. One of these services, which I happened to witness, was peculiarly impressive.
The after saloon was on a level with the main deck, and consequently its roof, which formed our promenade, looked down upon the humbler part of the ship. The first morning out, I rose with the dawn and went above. The sea was calm and smooth almost to glassiness; there was not a breath of wind nor the least feather of cloud or fog. Most of the stars had been paled by the light of the coming day; only a few were twinkling here and there as if struggling to maintain their existence as long as it were possible. They slowly faded and disappeared as the gleam of gold on the eastern horizon spread outward and upward, and betokened the approach of the sun. By-and-by a rim of fire appeared, and each moment grew larger till at last the full circle of light and heat was revealed above the sea. It was sunrise on the water, duller and tamer perhaps than in the midst of high waves, fierce winds, and fleecy clouds, but still a sunrise of great beauty.
A few minutes after I went on deck the pilgrims assembled for service. The priests read the prayers in full, sonorous tones, and the people bowed or knelt in unison, in accordance with the formula of the Græco-Russian Church. With their faces towards the east, they seemed to be saluting the rising sun, and it would have needed little play of imagination to picture them as pagan fire-worshippers instead of devout followers of Christ. The sun slowly rose while the service was in progress, and when the prayers were concluded his entire disk was above the horizon. A scene of worship more impressive than this it has rarely been my fortune to witness.
In good weather a steamer of ordinary speed can make the run from Odessa to Constantinople in about forty hours. At daylight on the second morning we were at the entrance of the Bosphorus, but it was still so dark that we could see little more than the lighthouses and a very dim outline of the forts that command the passage.
Just inside the entrance we cast anchor and waited for the visit of the health officer. Until this was obtained we could go no farther, and hold no communication with the shore. The quarantine regulations in the Orient are very rigid, and the least violation of them subjects the offender to severe penalties.
The health officer came at six o’clock, and after a brief inspection granted us a clean bill of health. Then we might have gone on, but a tantalizing fog made its appearance and delayed us an hour or more. Then it lifted a little and soon shut down, and it kept lifting and shutting alternately, so that we anchored twice afterwards; drifted some of the time, and moved very slowly for the rest of our way.
It was a disappointment to nearly all of us, for we had great anxiety to see the shores of the Bosphorus, about whose beauty we had heard so much. We had now and then a slight glimpse—all the more aggravating—but did not get a fair view of the shores until we were in sight of the great city.
Some days later, when the sky was clear and the air soft, I made a journey on the Bosphorus, as I was determined not to miss it.
The length of the Bosphorus from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmora is a little more than twenty miles, as a ship runs through; the shores are longer owing to their sinuosity. The strait is supposed to have been formed by an earthquake, as there is a similarity in the rocks of the two shores, and furthermore, there are on each side seven promontories corresponding to as many bays opposite. Its width at the narrowest point is about six hundred yards, and it enlarges in places to eight hundred, a thousand, fifteen hundred, two thousand, and twenty-five hundred yards. In the Gulfs of Bey-Kos and Buyuk-Dere it is more than three thousand yards wide.
The pen may give the figures that indicate the distances and heights, and depths, but no pen can give an adequate description of the pictures presented by the shores of the Bosphorus.
As we enter from the Black Sea we pass between the two castles, the one of Europe and the other of Asia. The hills are steep and rugged, and appear capable of easy defence; as we move along we have a succession of crags and rocks and forests; of villages, chateaux, and palaces in such profusion that we should be wearied were it not for the great beauty of the scene. For several miles the Asiatic side is but thinly inhabited, and the shore appears almost in its primitive condition. There is little else than mountains and gorges, lonely valleys, deep set and secluded, forests of varying colors fringing the cliffs and climbing the sloping sides of the hills, and below them the dark water in which the whole picture is at times reflected. On the European side the tableau is much the same for only a mile or so. Then begins a succession of edifices that show how much the progress of settlement has clung to the northern shore. Village after village, palace after palace, follow in such rapid succession that it is difficult to imagine them little else than a continuous line, which they indeed become, long before the towers and domes and minarets of the city come into sight. The irregularity of the shores adds to the picturesque effect; were they straight like the banks of an artificial canal, much of their beauty would be lost.
The real luxury of architecture on the Bosphorus, as we approach from the Black Sea, begins at Buyuk-Dere. This place has been called the most charming pleasure resort in the world. I am hardly prepared to endorse that opinion, but am willing to say it is one of the prettiest I have ever seen. Several of the foreign embassies have their summer residences here, and their palaces are quite prominent; the rich merchants of Constantinople dwell there in considerable numbers, and have fitted up their houses with very little regard for expense. The houses skirt the shore, and some of them climb the hills in terraces; there are groves of trees and a fine promenade near the water, so that the combined effect is very pretty. From here, as we go on, there is an uninterrupted succession of villages and palaces, whose names would be almost meaningless, but whose beauty as we view them from the water can never be forgotten.
By-and-by the fringe of villages becomes larger and deeper, and we are told that Constantinople is in sight. Its hills rise steeply so that the houses seem tost and in terraces; their varying colors appear as numerous as those of the kaleidoscope, and the domes and minarets that crown many of the elevations give the picture an emphatically oriental tinge. We are in front of the entrance to the Golden Horn with Pera and Golata on our right, and Stamboul, with its Seraglio Point, crowned with the dome of Santa Sophia on our left. Beyond are the waves of the Sea of Marmora, and as we look over them the Isles of the Princes rise between us and the horizon.
The harbor is dotted with shipping, and scores of restless steamers dart to and fro with their cargoes of passengers. Hundreds of caiques and other row boats are visible, and as our steamer drops her anchor, they throng around her in great numbers. The boatmen shout and gesticulate and push and fight, until they give us a fair indication of what the tower of Babel might have been just before the suspension of work on that edifice. Occasionally one of them falls into the water, but he is soon out again and shouting as wildly as ever. Evidently we shall not lack conveyance to the shore. The boatmen are a heterogeneous lot. They are Turks, Arabs, Maltese, Greeks, Italians, French, and Syrians, and there are many who would be unable, and others unwilling, to state their nationality. They are a picturesque crowd of thieves, most of them wearing the oriental dress, speaking a jargon of Italian and Greek and Turkish, with now and then one who has picked up a little English. They are difficult to manage, and not unfrequently, when they are out of sight of the police, indulge in robbing solitary passengers who engage them for journeys up and down the shores of the Bosphorus.
After running the gauntlet of the custom-house at Constantinople, we are at liberty to make our way to the hotels. All hotels are in the Pera quarter, on the east side of the Golden Horn, and there are always several runners for each establishment that board the steamer as soon as her anchor is down, and are ready to carry passengers and their baggage to the hostel-ries. No matter what hotel you intend to patronize, you are conducted up the steep hill, on whose elongated top the Grand Rue de Pera is situated.
You find that the street is very narrow and very dirty, even though a prolonged residence in New York may have given you modified notions about the ordinary condition of metropolitan highways and byways. There are pools and patches of mud that would have a slimy consistency if it were not frequently stirred by the feet of men and horses; and there are frequent heaps of filth that have waited so long for the scavenger that they have ceased to hope for his coming, and have settled down into the calm resignation of deep despair. The pavement is uneven and in very bad condition; it appears to have been wholly neglected since it was first laid down, and will probably continue to be neglected for years to come. The Moslem rarely repairs anything, as he believes that he is interfering with the work of God if he attempts to stop the progress of decay. He builds a house, a mosque, or a bridge—he erects a monument to the memory of his father or brother—he plants a tree and fences a field, and then rests content. The edifice may crumble, the monument may fall, or the tree may wither; he rolls his eyes to heaven and exclaims: “Inshallah”—as God wills it—his duty is ended.
Of course there are exceptions to the rule. Self-interest sometimes overcomes religious scruples in the East as well as elsewhere, and the Moslem will shrewdly conclude that the will of God requires him to preserve the gifts that Heaven has bestowed.
