It was dark when we sighted the city, but it was one of those clear darks where without any apparent light you can see everything. Surely no other city in the world has so beautiful an approach! Our great black steamer threaded her way between men-of-war, sail-boats, and all sorts of shipping, and if there were a thousand lights twinkling in the water there were a million from the city. It lies on a series of hills curved out like a monster amphitheatre, and it stretches all the way around. I looked up into the heavens, and it seemed to me that I never had seen so many stars in my life. Our sky at home has not so many. Yet there were no more than the yellow points of flame which flickered in every part of that sleeping city. Three tall minarets pierced above the horizon, and each of these wore circles of light which looked like necklaces and girdles of fire. Patches of black now and then showed where there were trees or marked a graveyard. Occasionally we heard a shrill cry or the barking of dogs, but these sounds came faintly, and seemed a part of the fairy-picture. It looked so much like a scene from an opera that I half expected to see the curtain go down and the lights flare up, and I feared the applause which always spoils the dream.
But nothing spoiled this dream. All night we lay in the beautiful Bosphorus, and all night at intervals I looked out of my porthole at that lovely sleeping princess. It never grew any less lovely. Its beauty and charm increased.
But in the morning everything was changed. A band of howling, screaming, roaring, fighting pirates came alongside in dirty row-boats, and to our utter consternation we found these bloodthirsty brigands were to row us to land. Not one word could we understand in all that fearful uproar. We were watching them in a terror too abject to describe, when, to our joy, an English voice said, “I am the guide for the two American ladies, and here is the kavass which the American minister sent down to meet you. The consul at Odessa cabled your arrival.”
Oh, how glad we were! We loaded them with thanks and hand-luggage, and scrambled down the stairway at the side of the steamer. A dozen dirty hands were stretched out to receive us. We clutched at their sleeves instead, and pitched into the boat, and our trunks came tumbling after us, and away we went over the roughest of seas, which splashed us and made us feel a little queer; and then we landed at the dirtiest, smelliest quay, and picked our way through a filthy custom-house, where, in spite of bribery and corruption, they opened my trunk and examined all the photographs of the family, which happened to be on top, and made remarks about them in Turkish which made the other men laugh. The mud came up over our overshoes as we stood there, so that altogether we were quite heated in temper when we found ourselves in an alley outside, filled with garbage which had been there forever, and learned that this alley was a street, and a very good one for Constantinople, too.
The porters in Turkey are marvels of strength. They wear a sort of cushioned saddle on their backs, and to my amazement two men tossed my enormous trunk on this saddle. I saw it leave their hands before it reached his poor bent back; he staggered a little, gave it a hitch to make it more secure, then started up the hill on a trot.
I never saw so much mud, such unspeakably filthy streets, and so many dogs as Constantinople can boast. You drive at a gallop up streets slanting at an angle of forty-five degrees, and you nearly fall out of the back of the carriage. Then presently you come to the top of that hill and start down the other side, still at a gallop, and you brace your feet to keep from pitching over the driver’s head. You would notice the dogs first were it not for the smells. But as it is, you cannot even see until you get your salts to your nose. The odors are so thick that they darken the air. You are disappointed in the dogs, however. There are quite as many of them as you expected. You have not been misled as to the number of them, but nowhere have I seen them described in a satisfactory way—so that you knew what to expect, I mean. In the first place, they hardly look like dogs. They have woolly tails like sheep. Their eyes are dull, sleepy, and utterly devoid of expression. Constantinople dogs have neither masters nor brains. No brains because no masters. Perhaps no masters because no brains. Nobody wants to adopt an idiot. They are, of course, mongrels of the most hopeless type. They are yellowish, with thick, short, woolly coats, and much fatter than you expect to find them. They walk like a funeral procession. Never have I seen one frisk or even wag his tail. Everybody turns out for them. They sleep—from twelve to twenty of them—on a single pile of garbage, and never notice either men or each other unless a dog which lives in the next street trespasses. Then they eat him up, for they are jackals as well as dogs, and they are no more epicures than ostriches. They never show interest in anything. They are blasé. I saw some mother dogs asleep, with tiny puppies swarming over them like little fat rats, but the mothers paid no attention to them. Children seem to bore them quite as successfully as if they were women of fashion.
We went sailing up the Golden Horn to the Skutari cemetery, one of the loveliest spots of this thrice-fascinating Constantinople. As we were descending that steep hill upon which it is situated we met a darling little baby Turk in a fez riding on a pony which his father was leading. This child of a different race, and six thousand miles away, looked so much like our Billy that I wanted to eat him up—dirt and all. I contented myself with giving him backsheesh, while my companion photographed him. Such an afternoon as that was on that lovely golden river, with the sun just setting, and our picturesque boatmen sending the boat through thousands upon thousands of sea-gulls just to make them fly, until the air grew dark with their wings, and the sunlight on their white breasts looked like a great glistening snow-storm!
One night we went to a masked ball given for the benefit of a new hospital which is situated upon the Golden Horn. It was given by Mr. Levy, one of the Turkish Commissioners at the World’s Fair, and the decorations were something marvellous. The walls were hung with embroideries which drove us the next day to the bazaars and nearly bankrupted us. Every street of Constantinople looks like a masked ball, so this one merely continued the illusion. We could distinguish the Mohammedan women from the others because they all went home before midnight without unmasking.
This ball is interesting because it is called “The Engagement Ball.” We were told that only at a subscription ball given for a charity in which their parents are interested and feel under moral obligation to support by their presence are the young people of Constantinople allowed to meet each other. The fathers and mothers occupy the boxes, and thus, under their very eyes, and masked, can love affairs be brought to a conclusion. During the week which followed no fewer than ten important engagements were duly heralded in the columns of the newspapers.
The most exciting things in Constantinople are the earthquakes. We were afraid they would not have any while we were there, but they accommodated us with a very satisfactory one! It upset my ink-bottle and broke the lamp and rattled everything in the room until I was delighted. When my companion came in she was indignant to think that I had enjoyed the earthquake all to myself, for she was in the rooms of the American Bible Society, and being thus protected, did not feel it. But I told her that that was her punishment for trying to prove that a missionary had cheated her, for she was not in that place for a godly purpose.