It is a well-known saying that pretty women generally dress well; either they adorn the dress, or the dress adorns them. The Sinope beauties are no exception to the rule, and the gay costume adds another attraction to the charms of the wearer.
On a fête-day a Sinope belle puts a many-coloured handkerchief over her head, which she ties as tightly as possible under the chin, in order to make her cheeks look round and smooth. In this, perhaps, she is a little mistaken, as ladies of other lands are who tighten their waists by way of improving their figures.
Another handkerchief is twisted round the head, beneath which the hair falls in two or three long thick plaits, while a few little curls are coquettishly allowed to stray over the forehead.
Her cloth jacket, of some bright colour, generally scarlet, blue, or green, is half covered with a rich embroidery of black or gold braid, and is left open in front, to show a full white chemise that is drawn up closely round the throat. A short petticoat of fringed silk, or a striped shawl of many colours is worn over large Turkish trousers, the toilet being completed by a crimson scarf fastened as a sash round the waist. Altogether it would be difficult to find a more brilliant or becoming costume.
The fair damsel also wears all her worldly wealth on her head and neck, and hanging from her ears, in the shape of long strings of gold or silver coins.
Unlike their Turkish neighbours, therefore, the Sinope Greeks have the inestimable advantage of being able to ascertain by the same glance whether the fortune equals the fair face of the young beauties amongst whom they have to select their wives.
For the first time for some years we saw again, not only middle-aged women, but women of a middle age, that were both well preserved and good-looking. In most countries the men have their proper allowance of the complete seven ages, but out of England, and in Eastern countries especially, it is rare to find women of the poorer classes who have more than three—namely, childhood, girlhood, and decrepit old age. From the second to the third is only a step, and a young girl has scarcely passed the bloom of early youth ere she changes in a marvellously short time into a wrinkled, toothless, shrivelled old woman. It was really refreshing to look at the good-looking women of uncertain age at Sinope; they had such a bright, matronly, and, if the simile may be used, such a sunshiny air about them.
The people seemed wonderfully good-natured, and bestowed upon us many nods and pleasant looks, as if they were really glad to see strangers in their little town.
Leaving the Greek quarter, we came to a broad, open space, with a few groups of cypress scattered about—the Turkish burial-ground, chosen with much taste, as is usually the case with Turkish cemeteries. Placed on the narrowest part of the isthmus that unites the promontory to the mainland, it commands lovely views over both bays.
We crossed a shaky draw-bridge, and, passing under an old mouldering gateway, found ourselves in the Turkish town—in the real region of true believers—not modern Turks, such as are now mostly seen in Constantinople, in Frank dresses and polished boots, but amongst grave, old-fashioned Moslems, arrayed in the flowing robes and large decorous turbans of days gone by.