In the Dardanelles we make our first acquaintance with the Turk. He arrives in a small steamer, with a crew of men wearing the red fez, and at the stern of his boat floats the red flag of Turkey, bearing the crescent. He gives us permission to pursue our way past the forts on either side at the mouth and along the Dardanelles, at the entrance to which point are lying off on our right the far-famed plains of windy Troy. I see also a couple of ironclads, but of what nationality I cannot exactly make out. We are soon out of the Dardanelles, and at Gallipoli, the last town on the European side, and we enter the Sea of Marmora. In current language, Constantinople includes Stamboul, Galata, and its suburbs, which stretch up both sides of the Bosphorus. Galata, the mercantile and shipping quarter, occupies the point and slopes at the right-hand side of the Golden Horn.
Constantinople looks best at a distance. It is true here that distance lends enchantment to the view. Outside it glitters with magnificence. Inside it is foul and beastly, with pavements detestable to walk along or drive, with ruins at every corner, and with refuse
We are quite mistaken in England as to the safety of walking the streets in Constantinople. I heard of a row last night, but by day the streets are quite as secure as they are in London. One thing that astonishes me is the utter ignorance of the people of what is going on outside respecting Turkish affairs, and the action, if any, of the diplomatists. You never hear a word on the subject. To sell seems to be the only aim of the Turk. The shops are prodigious. In London their owners would be a great middle class, and form an enlightened public opinion. Here they do nothing of the kind, and there is not a street that has a decent pavement nor a corner that is not a dunghill. There seems to be no attempt at improvement. The dogs—very much like Australian dingoes—bark and bite all day and howl all night. Confusion and decay seem to reign paramount. Now and then you come to an open space—as at the old slave-market, the mosques, and the Hippodrome, where a few trees, chiefly acacias, manage to live, and then you plunge into Holywell Street as it existed half a century back, and all is darkness and dirt again.
Constantinople seems to live chiefly on corn imported from Roumelia and Bulgaria; but they say they are going to open up Asia Minor by means of railways, and the wheat-grower there will then have his chance. There are few liquor-shops, but many for the sale of lemon-and-water and grapes and melons. In many a shop I see Sunlight Soap and the biscuits of Huntley and Palmer and Peek and Frean. The donkeys and horses have an awful time of it as they go along the narrow streets, with panniers on each side, which appear to get in everyone’s way. Then comes a rickety waggon, drawn by two big oxen, which seem as if they must grind the pedestrian to powder. Then follows the porter, perspiring and bending under his heavy load, and the aged crone, more or less veiled, as if she had—which she has not, unhappily—a glimpse of female charm to display. Now and then you meet a priest with his red-and-white turban and long brown robe, and if you make your way into a mosque—and they are all worth visiting—there, in a little wooden recess, seated cross-legged on an Indian mat, you will find a priest or devout layman by himself, repeating verses of the Koran. The mosques are grotesque outside, but inspiring from their size inside.
Constantinople is not the place to come to on a hot November day, and the commercial port is, I hold, utterly unfit for shipping. We have a good deal of diarrhoea on board, nor can you wonder, when you remember that into this one spot flows all the filth and sewage of Galata. It is worse than Naples; it is worse than Athens, and that is saying a good deal. Coleridge’s Cologne, with its numerous stenches, is nothing to it. If there be any truth in sanitary science, there must be an awful waste of life in these parts. Here we hear not a whisper of the Turkish crisis, or of the driving out of the Turk, ‘bag and baggage,’ as Lord Stratford de Redcliffe wrote fifty years before Mr. Gladstone adopted the celebrated phrase. Be that as it may, Constantinople gives you an idea of a densely-populated city. It is with real difficulty that you make your way anywhere. The fat official Turk, who dines in some gorgeous palace—and the place is full of them—and drives in his brougham and pair, may have an easy time of it; but the majority of the inhabitants, in their narrow shops and darkened houses, must have a bad time of it. I sigh for the wings of a dove, that I may fly away and be at rest. Under this pestiferous atmosphere and bright, blazing sun, it is impossible to do anything but sleep; but that is not easy in one’s small cabin, floating on this wide waste of sewage. There seems nothing to amuse the people. In the course of my peregrinations I met with but one minstrel, and he was far away. Next to the mosques, the coolest place I have yet visited is the new museum, with a
I fancy we are most of us tired of Constantinople. To me it is a place where a little sight-seeing goes a long way. Our gallant captain, on the contrary, tells me that he could put in three months here very well. As it is, there are about 2,000 English here, to say nothing of naturalized Greeks and Maltese. I suppose Constantinople is not a bad place for a short residence. The hotels are good, and in some you may have a bedroom for four francs a day. Provisions are not dear, but house-rent is very expensive. The population of the place is dense, at which I wonder, as Constantinople seems to me the most unhealthy city I have ever seen. The only nuisances are the guides, who will persist in following you everywhere, and whose knowledge of English and of the things you really want to know is very limited. For instance, I passed two obelisks one day. I asked my guide about them. ‘They come from Egypt,’ was his reply. I could have told him as much myself.
If you need rest, seek it not in Constantinople, with its noisy crowds by day and its noisy dogs by night; seek it not in its narrow streets, where horses and asses and big bullocks, dragging along the most rickety of waggons, are ever to be seen; seek it not as you drive along its uneven and disgracefully-paved streets. The mosques are cool and spacious—there you may rest; but if there is a service, you are not permitted to remain unless you are a Mohammedan. One advantage of the mosques is that there is generally a large open space attached to them, where people can wash themselves and also hold a market. People seem to