I felt myself grow hot and cold. For a moment all was still. How my heart beat! How feverishly I waited for that blessed word, “Forward!”
“Forward!” shouted the captain. The ship began to move.
On we go! Kings, princes, potentates, ye great ones of the earth! at that moment I felt nothing but compassion for you. All your wealth and power seemed but little in comparison with my place on that boat, and an empire a poor thing to offer in exchange for one look.
A minute passes, then another. We are gliding by Seraglio Point, and see opening before us an enormous space flooded with light and a huge mass of many shapes and colors. The point is passed, and behold! before us lies Constantinople—Constantinople, boundless, superb, sublime! The glory of creation and mankind! A triumph of beauty, far surpassing one’s wildest dreams!
And now; poor wretch, attempt to describe it. Profane with your commonplace words that divine vision. Who indeed can describe Constantinople? Chateaubriand? Lamartine? Gautier? What things you have all stammered and stuttered about it! and yet no one can resist trying. Words, phrases, comparisons crowd through the brain and drop off the end of one’s pen. I gaze, talk, write, all at the same time, hopeless of success, and yet compelled to the attempt by some overmastering influence.
View of Pera and Galata.
Let us see, then. The Golden Horn lies directly opposite us like a wide river; on each bank there extends a ridge; upon them stretch two parallel lines of the city, embracing eight miles of hill and valley, bay and promontory, a hundred amphitheatres of buildings and gardens, an enormous space dotted over with houses, mosques, bazârs, seraglios, baths, kiosks, of an infinite variety of color and form, and from their midst the sparkling points of thousands of minarets reaching heavenward like great pillars of ivory; then groves of cypresses descending in dark ranks from the hilltops to the water’s edge, fringing the outskirts, outlining the inlets; and through all a wealth of vegetation, crowning the heights, pushing up between the roofs, overhanging the water, flinging itself up in radiant luxuriance wherever it can obtain a foothold. To the right, Galata, her foreground a forest of masts and flags; above Galata, Pera, the imposing shapes of her European palaces outlined against the sky; in front, the bridge connecting the two banks, across which flow continually two opposite, many-hued streams of life; to the left, Stambul, scattered over her seven hills, each crowned with a gigantic mosque with its leaden dome and gilded pinnacle: St. Sophia, white and rose-tinted; Sultan Ahmed, flanked by six minarets; Suleiman the Great, crowned by ten domes; the Validêh Sultan, reflected in the waves; on the fourth hill the mosque of Muhammad II.; on the fifth, that of Selim; on the sixth, the seraglio of Tekyr; and, high above everything else, the white tower of the Seraskerat, which commands the shores of two continents from the Dardanelles to the Black Sea. Beyond the sixth hill of Stambul on the one hand, and Galata on the other, nothing can be distinguished save a few vague outlines of buildings, faint indications of towns and villages, broken up by bays and inlets, fleets of little vessels, and groups of trees hardly visible through the blue haze, and which appear more like atmospheric illusions than actual objects.
How can one possibly take in all the details of this marvellous scene? For a moment the eye rests upon a Turkish house or gilded minaret close by, but, immediately abandoning it, roams off once more at will into that boundless space of light and color, or scales the heights of those two opposite shores with their range upon range of stately buildings, groves, and gardens, like the terraces of some enchanted city, while the brain, bewildered, exhausted, overpowered, can with difficulty follow in its wake.
An inexpressible majestic serenity is diffused throughout this wonderful spectacle, an indefinable sense of loveliness and youth which recalls a thousand forgotten tales and dreams of boyhood—something aërial, mysterious, overpowering, transporting the imagination and senses far beyond the bounds of the actual.