I remember nothing more beautiful than the aspect of the burying-ground of Scutari, from the road which winds in front of the summer palace of the Princess Haybètoullah. The crest of the hill is one dense mass of dark foliage, while the slope is only partially clothed with trees, that advance and recede in the most graceful curves; and the contrast between the deep dusky green of the cypresses, and the soft bright tint of the young fresh grass in the open spaces between them, produces an effect almost magical, and which strikes you as being more the result of art than accident, until you convince yourself, by looking around you, that it is to its extent alone that this noble cemetery owes its gloom, for its site is eminently picturesque and beautiful. On one side, an open plain separates it from the channel; on the other, it is bounded by a height clothed with vines and almond trees—the houses of Scutari touch upon its border, and even mingle with its graves in the rear, while before it spreads a wide extent of cultivated land dotted with habitations.
Need I add that the Nekropolis of Scutari, such as I have described it, has also its local superstition? Surely not; and the idea is so wild, and withal so imaginative, that I cannot pass it by without record.
Along the channel may be constantly seen clouds of aquatic birds of dusky plumage, speeding their rapid flight from the Euxine to the Propontis, or bending their restless course from thence back again to the Black Sea, never pausing for a moment to rest their weary wing on the fair green spots of earth that woo them on every side; and it is only when a storm takes place in the Sea of Marmora, or sweeps over the bosom of the Bosphorus, that they fly shrieking to the cypress forest of Scutari for shelter; and these the Turks believe to be the souls of the damned, who have found sepulchre beneath its boughs, and which are permitted, during a period of elementary commotion, to revisit the spot where their mortal bodies moulder; and there mourn together over the crimes and judgment of their misspent existence upon earth—while, during the gentler seasons, they are compelled to pass incessantly within sight of the localities they loved in life, without the privilege of pausing even for one instant in the charmed flight to which they are condemned for all eternity!
My mind was full of this legend when I visited the cemetery—and I can offer no better apology for the wild verses that I strung together as I sat upon a fallen column in one of the gloomiest nooks of the forest, and amid the noon-day twilight of the thick branches, while my companions wandered away among the graves.
THE DAMNÈD SOULS.
Hark! ’tis a night when the storm-god rides
In triumph o’er the deep;
And the howling voice of the tempest chides
The spirits that fain would sleep:
When the clouds, like a sable-bannered host,