Mounting the hill to the west of Piale Pasha, we reached a vast open plain from which there is a view of Stambul and the entire length of the Golden Horn from Eyûb to Seraglio Point, four miles of mosque and garden—a scene so overpoweringly beautiful that one is tempted to fall upon his knees as before some heavenly vision. On the Ok-Meidan (Place of Arrows) the sultans used formerly to practise shooting with the bow and arrow, after the custom of the Persian kings. A number of small stone obelisks and pillars scattered about irregularly bear inscriptions each to the effect that upon that spot some imperial arrow has fallen. The beautiful kiosk is still standing from whose tribune the sultan was wont to draw his bow; on the right were drawn up a long line of pashas and beys, living exclamation-points indicative of the admiration excited by their lord’s dexterity; to the left stood a group of twelve pages belonging to the imperial family, whose duty it was to run after and pick up the arrows, marking the spots on which they fell; hidden behind the surrounding trees and shrubbery a few venturesome Turks peeped out who had stolen thither to gaze fearfully upon the sublime countenance of the vicar of God; while in the tribune, in the attitude of some haughty athlete, stood the sultan Mahmûd, the mightiest archer of the empire, his flashing eye compelling the bystanders to avert their gaze, and that famous beard, black as the raven’s feathers of Mt. Taurus, gleaming afar against the white tunic all spotted with the blood of the Janissaries. All this has now changed and become utterly commonplace. The Sultan practises with a revolver in the courtyard of his palace, while Ok-Meidan is used by the infantry for target-practice. On one side stands a dervish monastery, on the other a solitary café, and the whole place is as melancholy and deserted as a steppe.
Piri Pasha.
Descending from the Ok-Meidan toward the Golden Horn, we came to another little Mussulman quarter called Piri Pasha, possibly after the famous vizier of the time of the first Selim, who educated Suleiman the Magnificent. Piri Pasha faces the Jewish quarter of Balata, situated on the opposite bank of the Golden Horn. We met nothing as we passed through it except a few dogs and occasionally an old Turkish beggar; we did not regret this, however, as it gave us an opportunity to examine its construction at our leisure. It is a very curious fact that on entering any quarter of Constantinople, after having seen it from the water or some adjacent height, you invariably experience precisely the same shock of astonishment as on going behind the scenes of a theatre after having witnessed some beautiful spectacular effect from the stalls. You are filled with amazement to find that the combination of all these mean and ugly objects is what has just produced so charming a whole. I suppose there is no other city in the world whose beauty is so entirely dependent on general effect as Constantinople. Seen from Balata, Piri Pasha is the prettiest little village imaginable, smiling, radiant with color, decked with foliage, its charming image reflected in the Golden Horn like the features of some beautiful nymph, awakening dreams of love and pleasure in the breast. Enter it and the whole thing changes: you find nothing but rude, mean little houses colored like booths at a country fair, filthy courts looking like witches’ dens, groups of dusty fig and cypress trees, gardens littered with rubbish, narrow, deserted streets—dirt, misery, wretchedness. But run down the hillside, jump into a käik, and give half a dozen strokes with the oars, behold! the fairy city has reappeared, beautiful and fascinating as before.
Haskeui.
Continuing along the shore of the Golden Horn, we descended into another suburb, vast, populous, wearing an entirely different aspect from the last, and where we saw quite plainly, after taking half a dozen steps, that we were no longer among Mussulmans. On all sides dirty children covered with sores were rolling about on the ground; bent, ragged old crones sat working with their skinny fingers in the doorways, through which glimpses could be caught of dusky interiors cluttered up with heaps of old iron and rags; men clad in long, dirty cloaks, with tattered handkerchiefs wound around their heads, skulked along close to the wall, glancing furtively about them; thin, meagre faces peered out of the windows as we went by; old clothes dangled from cords suspended between the houses; mud and litter everywhere. It was Haskeui, the Jewish quarter, the Ghetto of the northern shore of the Golden Horn, facing that on the other shore, with which, at the time of the Crimean War, it was connected by a wooden bridge, all traces of which have since disappeared. From here stretches another long chain of arsenals, military schools, barracks, and drill-grounds, extending nearly all the way to the end of the Golden Horn. But of these we saw nothing, our heads and our legs having given out equally. Of all that we had seen, there only remained a confused jumble of places and people; it seemed as though we had been travelling for a week, and we thought of far-away Pera with a slight sensation of home-sickness. At this point we should certainly have turned back had not our solemn compact made upon the bridge come into our minds, and Yunk, according to his helpful custom, revived my drooping spirits by chanting the grand march from Aida.
Kaliji Oghlu.
Forward, then! Traversing another Turkish cemetery and climbing still another hill, we found ourselves in the suburb of Kaliji Oghlu, inhabited by a mixed population. In this little city, at every street-corner, you come upon a new race or a new religion. You mount, descend, climb up, pass among tombs and mosques, churches and synagogues. You skirt gardens and cemeteries, encounter handsome Armenian women with fine matronly figures, slender Turkish ones who steal a look at you through their veils; all around you hear Greek, Armenian, Spanish—the Spanish of the Jews—and you walk on and on and on. “After all, you know,” we say to one another, “Constantinople must end somewhere.” Everything on earth has an end. We have been told so ever since we were children. On and on and on, and now the houses of Kaliji Oghlu grow fewer, woods begin to appear; there is but one more group of dwellings. Quickening our pace, we passed them by, and at last reached—
Sudludji.
Merciful Heavens! what did we reach? Nothing in the world but another suburb, the Christian settlement of Sudludji, built on a hill surrounded by woods and cemeteries, the same hill at whose base was formerly one end of the only bridge which in ancient times connected the two banks of the Golden Horn. But this suburb, by a merciful providence, was actually the last, and our excursion had finally come to an end. Quitting the houses, we cast about us for some spot where we might seek a little much-needed repose. Back of the village there rises a bare, steep ascent, up which dragging our weary limbs, we found before us the largest Jewish cemetery in Constantinople. It is a vast open space, filled with innumerable flat gravestones, presenting the desolate appearance of a city destroyed by an earthquake, and unrelieved by a tree or flower or blade of grass, or even so much as a footpath—a desert solitude as depressing to look upon as the scene of some great disaster. Seating ourselves upon one of the tombs, we turned in the direction of the Golden Horn, and while resting our tired bodies feasted our eyes upon the superb panorama which lay spread out before us. At our feet lay Sudludji, Kaliji Oghlu, Haskeui, Piri Pasha, a chain of picturesque villages set in the midst of green gardens and cemeteries and blue water; to the left, the solitary Ok-Meidan and the hundred minarets of Kassim Pasha, and farther on the huge, indistinct outlines of Stambul; beyond, fading away into the distant sky, the blue line of the mountains of Asia; directly facing us on the opposite shore of the Golden Horn lay the mysterious quarter of Eyûb, whose gorgeous mausoleums, marble mosques, deserted streets, and shady inclines, dotted with tombstones, could be clearly distinguished from where we sat, rural-looking solitudes full of a melancholy charm; to the right of Eyûb lay still other villages covering the hillsides and peeping at their own reflections in the water; and then the final bend of the Golden Horn, lost to view between two lofty banks covered with trees and flowers.