The Turkish pasha, for instance, is now a shadow of his former self. What a master of men he looked when seated on a fine Arab horse and glittering saddle-cloth, he rode slowly through the streets, accompanied by a retinue of servants on foot, the crowd making way for him to pass as though a king went by. What an incarnation of dignity he was when he floated on the Bosporus in a caïque of five pairs of oars, two servants squatting in front of him, with folded hands, in the bottom of the boat; his pipe-bearer, behind on the poop, ready to present him with a long-stemmed pipe of cherry or jasmine wood, surmounted by an amber mouthpiece, adorned with diamonds. With the disappearance of such things, there has been a sensible weakening of the awe which the ruling race excited in the rest of the population. If any one wishes to experience the fall, so to speak, in the temperature of the feeling of awe produced by the change from an Oriental to a European garb let him visit the Museum of the Janissary Costumes. What terror those costumes must have inspired! Or let him visit the Imperial Treasury in the Seraglio, and walk down the line of lay-figures attired in the costumes worn by successive Sultans. The eye pays instant homage to every master of the Ottoman Empire clad in native apparel. But when the figure of Mahomet the Reformer, who swept away the janissaries and other old institutions, is seen dressed in European clothes (except for the red fez), one reads there the sign that the glory of the House of Othman was on the wane. The dread and majesty by which the Turk was formerly hedged round have vanished. Within the memory of men still living, eunuchs carried swords to chastise indiscreet admirers of Oriental beauties, and did not hesitate to slash a European guilty of casting long, lingering looks upon the fair faces. It was forbidden, within days that one recalls, to pass the imperial palace on horseback or with an umbrella opened. So strictly was the rule enforced, that even the “Great Elchi,” Sir Stratford Canning, riding by the palace, was once compelled to dismount from his horse. This proved too much for the great man. Furious at the indignity, he sent instantly for his dragoman, demanded an immediate audience of the Sultan, and obtained the order which put an end to the humiliating custom.
It is not, however, among the Turkish population alone that a marked change in dress has occurred. Within the memory of living persons, Armenian and Jewish women appeared in public wearing distinctive veils. Baggy trousers, head-kerchiefs, striking colours, embroidered jackets, turbans, were in vogue among the non-Moslem inhabitants, making the scenes in the streets kaleidoscopic, and furnishing also a ready means whereby to identify the nationalities that seemed inextricably mingled together. It is surprising how a resident of Constantinople can recognise the nationality of the peoples he meets, even since a common style of dress has come into fashion. But in days not very remote, every native wore his country upon his sleeve. His costume was the badge of his race and people. Now, the order of the day is “à la Franca.”
A FORTUNE-TELLER
In Stamboul, on the way to the Sublime Porte, an old negress may often be seen telling fortunes by means of coloured beads and shells.
Again, what a change has come over the style of building in the place. The palaces of the Sultan are on European models.
The day has vanished, when to go up or down the Bosporus was to move through a scene in which the charms of nature were heightened by the fascinating primitiveness and fancifulness of the Orient. The large old-fashioned Turkish house, almost nothing but stories of windows, painted deep red, or left to assume the natural grey of the wood, with broad eaves under which small attic windows, filled with little diamond-shaped panes of glass nestled, have disappeared, or are fast falling into decay. Venetian shutters are replacing the latticed screens, which invested a Turkish home with so much mystery; conservatories have taken the room of the old green-houses of orange-trees and lemon-trees. And, worst of all, boats of European form are supplanting the caïque, so light, so graceful, floating upon the water like a seabird, and making the Bosporus seem a stream in fairyland.
Nowhere, perhaps, is the mark of change more evident than in respect to the means of communication, whether in the city or on the straits. Long lines of tramways run from the Galata Bridge to the Golden Gate and the Gate of S. Romanus, from one end of Stamboul to the other. Along the railway that forms the highway to Europe, there are five stations within the city limits for the accommodation of the districts beside the track. The sedan chairs in which ladies were usually carried, in making calls, are now occasionally employed to convey them to and from evening parties. The groups of horses standing at convenient points in the great thoroughfares to carry you up a street of steps or to a distant quarter, with the surudji, switch in hand, running beside you to urge the animal onward and to take it back at the close of your ride, have given way to cabstands, and to a tunnel that pierces the hill of Galata. A tramway carries one through Galata and Pera as far out as the suburb of Chichli, while another line runs close to the shore from the Inner Bridge to Ortakeui. There are persons still living who remember the first steamer that plied on the Bosporus, in the forties of last century. Its main occupation was to tug ships up or down the straits; but once a day, in summer, it conveyed passengers between the city and the villages of Therapia and Buyukderé. A second steamer soon followed, and charged eleven piasters for the trip each way. Owing, however, to the opposition of the caïquedjis, the steamer could not moor at the quay, so that passengers were obliged to embark and disembark at both ends of the journey in caïques, at the rate of one piaster each way. Thus a return trip, which now costs one shilling and eight pence, involved an expense of four shillings and four pence.