I had undertaken, before leaving Aleppo, to give the guide, if he acted conformably to my wishes, and behaved well, twenty pounds over and above the hundred provided by the agreement: I therefore sent for him, to settle finally, and part. He had heard that I was a person different from what he had supposed me to be: but it did not alter his conduct, as might be expected, or make him stoop to cringing; he still spoke with the same honest, bold familiarity; and when I gave him the promised twenty pounds, he never hinted, cringed for, or even looked as if he expected more: but when we came to part, the feelings he disclosed, and those I myself felt, convinced me, that Man is not naturally that brute which prejudice has made him; and, when left to its own operations, the human heart would be uniformly kindly, affectionate, and sympathetic: the poor, rough, unpolished Turk, betrayed the strongest marks of sensibility, and I myself once more felt the uneasiness of parting.
I think this is the proper place to give you my opinion of the Turks, while the recollection of honest Hassan is fresh in my mind; and I cannot do it better than by quoting the words of an excellent French Writer——-
“The Turks (says M. du Loir) are naturally a good people, which is not to be ascribed to the climate; for the Greeks born in the same climate have very different dispositions, and retain only the bad qualities of their ancestors, viz. roguery, treachery, and vanity. The Turks, on the contrary, priding themselves on their integrity and modesty, are distinguished in general by an open, ingenuous simplicity of manners; courtiers only excepted, who, to Turkey, as every where else, are the slaves of ambition and avarice.”
The name of Bagdad has been so renowned in Eastern story, and is the scene of so many of those bewitching tales which we find translated, or pretended to be translated, from the Arabic and Persian, that I felt great pleasure in seeing it, and conceived myself to be at the very fountain-head of marvellous adventure and romance. Fraught with this idea, I was impatient to go forth into the town; and notwithstanding the weather was beyond conception hot, I paraded a number of streets: but never did I, in the course of my life, see a place so calculated to bely the opinion one would form of it from the Eastern tales. It appeared to me to be among the most disagreeable cities of the world, and has no one circumstance that I could discover to recommend it: the heat is so great, that in the Summer-time the inhabitants are forced to keep their markets in the night, and to lie all night in the open air on the terraces of their houses.
The Armenian with whom I resided, did every thing in his power to render the place agreeable to me; and I shall always retain a lively sense of his goodness and hospitality: he was not only generous and polite, but well informed, and pleasing in conversation. I took occasion to express to him the disappointment I felt at finding Bagdad so very different from what I expected; and told him that I had, when a youth, learned to think highly of it, or rather romantically, from reading Eastern tales. This led to a conversation on the Arabian Nights Entertainments, a copy of which he had in the Arabic, and produced it: he then shewed me, with great triumph, a French translation of them, printed at Paris, which he had read, and declared that the translation was nothing at all in comparison with the original. I believe he was well qualified to judge, for he was a perfect master of the French language.
We talked of the Eastern tale of the Glass Man, who, in a reverie, increases his stock till he gets so rich as, in imagination, to marry the Cadi’s daughter, &c. &c. and in kicking his wife, kicks all his glasses about, and destroys the whole of his visionary fortune. I praised the humour of it much——“Sir,” said he, “there is nothing in it that may not be experienced frequently in actual life: those waking dreams are the usual concomitants of opium: a man who has accustomed himself to the pernicious practice of eating opium, is constantly subject to them. I have, in the course of my time, found a thousand of those dreamers holding forth in the plenitude of imaginary power. I have seen a common porter become Cadi, and order the bastinado. I have seen a wretched tailor raised by the effects of opium to the office of Aga of the Janissaries, deposing the Sultan, and ordering the bow-string to all about him. I have seen some indulging in the blandishments of love with Princesses, and others wallowing in the wealth of Golconda. But the most extraordinary visionary of this kind I ever met with, was one who imagined himself translated to Paradise, co-equal to Mahomet, and sitting by the side of that prophet, arguing with him in defence of the use of wine and opium: he argued most ingeniously, listened in silence to the supposed arguments of his adversary, answered them, replied, rejoined, and still argued on——till, growing at last angry, he swore that he was as a good a prophet as him, did not care a fig for him, and called him fool and false prophet. A Turk who was present, in the fulness of his zeal, laid a stick very heavily across his shoulders, and put an end to the vision: and never did I see a wretch so abject, so forlorn, or so miserably desponding; he put his forehead to the ground, which he wet with his tears, crying, Mercy, Mahomet! mercy, holy Prophet! mercy, Alla!——nor could he find relief (such is the ruin of opium) till he got a fresh supply of it in his mouth, which soon gave him a temporary respite from the horrors of his situation.”
Unquestionably, Bagdad was once a great city, of flourishing commerce; but the Sultan Amurath the Fourth, when he made himself master of it, put the richest Merchants settled there to death; and it has ever since gradually declined. About two days journey from it, lie the ruins of the once famous city of Babylon. I was much disposed to go to see it, and thence drop down the Euphrates to Bassora: but my Armenian host told me there was nothing in it to recompense a person for half the trouble; for, of that magnificent city, which was sixty miles in circumference, which was encompassed with walls eighty-seven feet in thickness, and three hundred and fifty in height, nothing was to be seen but the bare foundations of some great edifices. The Tower of Belus, and the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar, lie with the rest in undistinguished ruin. The greatest curiosities, then, were, in the first place, the ruins of a building said to be the famed Tower of Babel, which appeared to have been half a league in compass; and the remains of a vast bridge over the Euphrates, where it is half a league broad.
I was not more anxious to arrive at the city of Bagdad than I was to leave it; and having written letters, and put them in a way of being forwarded to Europe, I took leave of my friendly hospitable Armenian, and, with a thousand acknowledgments for his kindness, set out on horseback to a place on the Tigris, where I embarked in a boat, in order to proceed to Bassora. This river, known since the first records of human existence by Geographers, is remarkable for its rapidity, whence, Pliny says, it has the name of Tigris, (in the Median language, a dart); and for its extraordinary course, which is in many places under ground, rises in Armenia, sinks into the earth near mount Taurus, and runs under a mountain——then rising at the other side, follows its course through the lake Thespites——again sinks frequently under ground, and continues hid at one time for a space of twenty-five miles; where, once more emerging, it glides along with a very rapid stream, meets the Euphrates at a place called Korna, passes through Bassora, and falls into the Persian Gulph.
As the boat in which I took my passage had no convenience for excluding the violence of the sun, except an awning, I suffered extremely from the heat. The river itself was grand; but the banks, and contiguous country, contained nothing to attract notice——no object to diversify the dreary, deserted aspect of the scene——nothing to afford room for reflection, or give birth to a new idea. I do not remember to have ever passed through such a vast extent of country, so uniformly dull and uninteresting. The only thing that served to keep the mind alive, was the apprehension of robbers, who, in great numbers, hover over this river, and plunder passengers. We had taken care, on leaving Bagdad, to be well provided with fire-arms; and they did us yeomen’s service——for we were frequently attacked by robbers with a view to plunder, but found that a shot or two dispersed and sent them off in consternation. One night, however, in passing a creek, we perceived several boats issuing from it, in great order, and in a manner that evinced method and premeditation: we silently prepared for their reception, and were completely ready to meet them warmly, while they thought us quite unprepared, and unconscious of their approach: they first endeavoured to board us by surprise: wishing rather to frighten than to kill them, we began by firing over their heads; on which they set up the most horrible shouts, and rushed on with a tumultuous rapidity, making the most terrible noise, in order to intimidate us: they were by this time quite near us; we therefore took aim at them, and let fly, and immediately perceived them in great confusion, some of the boats losing their helm, and falling with the stream on the others: at last we saw them sheer off, and they gave us no farther trouble.