Constantinople, v. 2 (of 2)

by Edmondo De Amicis

Well, there is no help for it; we must resign ourselves to catching nothing more than a flying glimpse of it all, and can only get that by turning our heads from side to side with the monotonous regularity of automatons.

After leaving Cheragan behind, we see on our left the large village of Orta, above which appears the shining dome of the mosque erected by the Validéh Sultan, mother of Abdul-Aziz, and the graceful roofs of the palace of Riza-Pasha at the foot of a hill from whose summit the light and shining walls of the imperial kiosk of the Star peep out from amid a dense mass of foliage. Orta Keui contains the residences of a number of Greek, Armenian, and Frankish bankers, and as we passed, the Constantinople boat was in the act of landing her passengers. A crowd of persons went ashore, other crowds stood waiting to embark; there were Turkish and Armenian gentlemen, officers, monks, eunuchs, dandies, fezzes, turbans, hats like bushel-measures, little caps, all jumbled together—a scene similar to that which may be witnessed at any one of the twenty boat-landings along the Bosphorus, more especially toward evening. Opposite Orta Keui is the gay little village of Chengel—village of the anchor; from an old iron anchor found on its shore by Muhammad II.[L] It is surrounded by villas, while on the shore stands that imperial kiosk of infamous celebrity from which Murad IV., transported with envious rage, ordered the execution of those groups of country-people whom he saw passing happily through the fields singing as they went.

[L] Chengel Keui takes its name from the bend in the shore at that point.—Trans.

Turning again toward the shore of Europe, we find ourselves on a line with the pretty village and charming harbor of Kuru Chesmeh, the ancient Anaplus.[M] Here Medea landed with Jason and planted the famous laurel tree. Then, looking back again to Asia, we see the smiling villages of Kulehli and Vani spread out along the shore to right and left of a huge barrack whose reflection in the water resembles more that of a royal palace. Back of the two villages rises a hill whose summit is crowned by a large garden, in the midst of which, barely discernible among the branches of the trees, glimmers the white kiosk where Suleiman the Great passed three years of his life, hidden away in a little tower, to escape the spies and executioners of his father, Selim. While we are trying to identify the tower amid the trees the steamer has passed Arnaût-Keui—the Albanian village—now peopled by Greeks, whose houses surround a small bay in the European shore full of sailing vessels. But there is no use in attempting to see everything. One village draws away our attention from another; a beautiful mosque distracts us from an exquisite landscape; and while we are gazing at villages and harbors we have missed palaces of viziers, pashâs, sultans, chief eunuchs, and other prominent persons; yellow, blue, and purple houses hung with vines and creepers, seeming to float upon the top of the waves or overflow with bloom, half buried in groves of cypress, laurel, and orange trees; buildings with Corinthian façades ornamented with rows of white marble columns; Swiss châlets, Japanese huts, little Moorish palaces, Turkish kiosks, whose three stories project one beyond the other, the grated galleries of their harems overhanging the Bosphorus, while little flights of stairs lead down to gardens washed by the waves. All the buildings are small, light, unsubstantial, corresponding precisely to the nature of the power wielded by those who inhabit them—the triumph of youth, the success of an intrigue, a high office which may be forfeited to-morrow, a glory doomed to end in exile, a fortune destined to evaporate, a greatness which will crumble away. There is hardly an unoccupied spot on the Bosphorus: it is like a sort of Grand Canal running through a huge rural Venice. Villas, kiosks, and palaces rise one behind the other, so placed as to leave the façade of each in view, those in the rear seeming to perch upon the roofs of those in front, while between and behind them is a mass of green, the tops and points of oaks, plane trees, maples, poplars, pines, and fig trees, through whose branches may be seen sparkling fountains and the gleaming domes of lonely türbehs and solitary mosques.

[M] Arnaût-Keui, the next village, is the Anaplus of the ancients.—Trans.

Looking back at Constantinople, we can still make out, indistinctly, the Seraglio Hill and the huge dome of St. Sophia rising darkly against the gold and limpid background of the evening sky; meanwhile, Arnaût-Keui, Vani, Kulehli, Chengel, Orta have all disappeared, and our surroundings undergone an entire change. We now seem to be on an immense lake; to right and left on either shore there opens a little bay; around that on our left lies in a semicircle the pretty Greek town of Bebek shaded by lofty trees, among which stand a fine old mosque and the imperial kiosk of Humayun-Habad, where in former days the sultans used to grant secret audiences to foreign ambassadors; on one side the town is buried in the thick foliage of a little valley, on the other it climbs the steep ascent of a hill covered with oak trees and crowned by a grove famous for its echo, where the noise of a single horse’s hoofs resounds like the tramp of a regiment. The view here would throw a queen into raptures, and yet it is straight-way forgotten when we turn to look at the opposite shore. There, indeed, it is a veritable earthly paradise which is spread out before our eyes. Kandili, variegated as a town of Holland, with its white mosque and train of villas, describes a wide arc upon a bold promontory; behind it rises the flowery hill of Igiadié, crowned by a battlemented tower where a watchman is stationed to keep a lookout for any appearance of fire on either shore. Two valleys open on the bay to the right of Kandili, and quite close together, called respectively Big and Little Blue River, and between them are the charming grounds of the Sweet Waters of Asia, planted with sycamore, oak, and plane trees, above which stands the magnificent kiosk erected by the mother of Abdul-Mejid in the style of the Dolmabâghcheh palace, surrounded by its gardens all red with roses. Beyond the “Large Blue River” may be seen the brilliant colors of Anadoli Hissar, built upon the side of a hill upon whose summit rise the graceful towers of the Bayezid Ilderim, which exactly faces the castle of Muhammad II. on the opposite shore.

At that hour this enchanting part of the Bosphorus is full of life and movement; hundreds of little boats cover the bays and inlets of the European shore; steamers and sailing vessels pass, bound for the harbor of Bebek; Turkish fishermen busy themselves with their nets suspended over the water from lofty poles and cross-beams; a throng of passengers disembark from the Constantinople boat upon the stairs of the European town—Greek gentlemen, Lazarists, students from the American Protestant college, and family parties laden with shawls and wraps. On the other side we can see with the aid of the glass parties of Mussulman ladies walking about beneath the trees of the Sweet Waters or seated in little groups on the banks of the “Blue Water,” while numberless käiks and small boats with awnings, filled with Turkish men or women, come and go along the shore. It is all so festive, so Arcadian, so irresistibly charming, that I feel as though I must fling myself overboard, and, swimming to one or the other of the two banks, plant myself there with the fixed determination, come what may, to live and die in the midst of that Mussulman paradise. All at once, with a new change of scene, such ideas take flight: the Bosphorus now stretches away directly ahead of us, with something of the look of the Rhine, only it is a modified, softened Rhine, decked with the gorgeous and varied coloring of the Orient. On the left a cemetery shaded by groves of cypresses and pines forms the first break in the hitherto uninterrupted chain of villages, and immediately after it, on the rocky sides of Mount Hermæon, rise the three large towers of Rumili Hissar, the Castle of Europe, surrounded by battlemented walls and lesser towers, covering the incline to the water’s edge with picturesque ruins. This is the renowned fortress erected by Muhammad II. a year before the conquest of Constantinople in defiance of the indignant remonstrances of Constantine, whose envoys, as every one knows, were sent back threatened with death by way of reply. This is the narrowest part of the Bosphorus, it being here only eight hundred and ten yards wide, and the current is consequently so swift that it has obtained the name of the “Great Current” from the Greeks and the “Devil’s Current” from the Turks. It was here that Mandrokles of Samos constructed the bridge of boats across which Darius conducted his seven hundred thousand soldiers, and, as it is supposed, that the “Ten Thousand” crossed on their return from Asia; but no trace can now be found either of the two pillars of Mandrokles nor of the rock-hewn throne of Mount Hermæon from whence the Persian king watched the passage of his army. A little Turkish village nestles at the foot of the castle, and the Asiatic shore stretches away in the distance, ever greener and more picturesque. There is an unbroken succession of boat-landings, little houses, gardens, tiny valleys overflowing with vegetation, small inlets across which the limbs of the gigantic trees which line their banks nearly meet, while beneath white-sailed fishing-boats pass slowly along on the placid surface of the water, and charming pleasure-grounds, gay with flowers, shelve gently down to the shore, or terraced gardens framed in verdure, while from the summits of the neighboring hills gleam the white stones of little cemeteries.

Sweet Waters of Europe.

Next Kaneijeh comes unexpectedly into view, its red houses covering two rocky promontories on the Asiatic shore, against whose bases the waves break with a musical sound, while above, the minarets of its two charming mosques glisten among a dark mass of cypress trees and umbrella pines. Along here the gardens rise one above the other like terraces, and the villas recommence, among the latter being the marvellously beautiful palace of the celebrated Fuad Pâsha, poet and diplomat, vain, voluptuous, and charming, who has been called the Ottoman Lamartine. A little farther on we come to the pretty village of Balta Limân, situated at the opening of a small valley on the European shore, through which a narrow stream flows, emptying itself into the harbor. Above rises a hill whose sides are covered with villas, conspicuous among which is the ancient palace of Reshid Pâsha. Then comes the bay of Emir Ghian Oghlu Bagche, whose waters look green from the surrounding cypress trees, among which gleams, white as snow, a solitary mosque surmounted by a great globe with golden rays. The boat meanwhile approaches first one shore and then the other, close enough for us to distinguish clearly all the little details of the landscape. Now it is the vestibule of the selamlik of a wealthy Turk, opening on the water, in front of which a big majordomo is stretched upon a divan smoking; then a eunuch who stands upon the lowest step of a landing-stair assisting two veiled Turkish ladies into a käik; farther on an old Turk is seated cross-legged, meditating upon the Koran, at the foot of an immense plane tree, which shades a garden enclosed between green hedges; family parties are assembled upon the terraces of their country-houses; herds of sheep and goats feed upon high pasture-lands; horsemen gallop along the shore, and strings of camels pass across the brows of the hills, their strange, unfamiliar shapes outlined against the clear sky.