There were caiques lying about the little steamer-landing when we were ready to return, and Laura and I decided to take one of these down the Horn to the ship. The caique is a curiously shaped canoe-sort of a craft, and you have to get in carefully and sit still. But once in and seated, it moves as silently and smoothly as a gliding star.
It was sunset, and the Golden Horn was true to its name. Ships at anchor, barges drifting up and down, were aglow with the sheen of evening—the water a tawny, molten flood, the still atmosphere like an impalpable dust of gold. Caiques carrying merchants to their homes somewhere along the upper shores were burnished with the aureate hue. Domes and minarets caught and reflected the wonder of it—the Galata bridge ahead of us had become such a span as might link the shores of the River of Peace.
Once more Constantinople was a dream of Paradise—a vision of enchantment—a city of illusion.
XXII
EPHESUS: THE CITY THAT WAS
Like Oriental harbors generally, Smyrna from the sea has a magic charm. When we slowly sailed down a long reach of water between quiet hills and saw the ancient city rising from the morning mist, we had somehow a feeling that we had reached a hitherto undiscovered port—a mirage, perhaps, of some necromancer's spell.
We landed, found our train, and went joggling away through the spring landscape, following the old highway that from time immemorial has led from Ephesus to Smyrna—the highway which long ago St. Paul travelled, and St. John, too, no doubt, and the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalen. For all these journeyed between Ephesus and Smyrna in their time, and the ancient road would be crowded with countless camel trains and laden donkeys then; also with the wheeled vehicles of that period—cars and chariots and cages of wild animals for the games—and there would be elephants, too, gaudily caparisoned, carrying some rich potentate of the East and his retinue—a governor, perhaps, or a king. It was a mighty thoroughfare in those older days and may be still, though it is no longer crowded, and we did not notice any kings.
We did notice some Reprobates—the ones we have always with us. They sat just across the aisle, engaged in their usual edifying discussion as to the identity of the historic sites we were supposed to be passing. Finally they got into a particularly illuminating dispute as to the period of St. Paul's life and ministrations. It began by the Apostle (our Apostle) casually remarking that St. Paul had lived about twenty-one hundred years ago.
It was a mild remark—innocent enough in its trifling inaccuracy of two or three centuries—but it disturbed the Colonel, who has fallen into the guide-book habit, and is set up with the knowledge thereof.