THE
CITY OF THE SULTAN.
CHAPTER I.
Departure for Broussa—Rocky Coast—Moudania—The Custom House—Translation of the word Backshich—The Archbishop of Broussa—The Boatman’s House—The Dead and the Living—Laughable Cavalcade—Dense Mists—Fine Country—Flowers, Birds, and Butterflies—The Coffee Hut—The Turkish Woman—Broussa in the Distance—The Dried-up Fountain—Immense Plains—Bohemian Gipsies—Mountain Streams—Turkish Washerwomen—Fine Old Wall—The Jews’ Quarter—The Turkish Kiosk—Oriental Curiosity—A Dream of Home.
Having decided on visiting Broussa, we hired an island caïque with four stout rowers, and provided ourselves with plenty of coats and cloaks, a basket of provisions, and a few volumes of French classics; and thus we set sail from the Golden Horn on the last day of May, leaving Stamboul all splendour and sunshine.
A brisk northerly wind carried us rapidly out into the Propontis; all sails were set; my father and myself comfortably established among “the wraps,” our Greek servant ensconced between two baskets, the steersman squatted upon the poop of the boat grinning applause, and revealing in his satisfaction a set of teeth as white as ivory; and, ere long, excepting this last, our attendant, and myself, every soul on board was asleep.
In less than two hours, Stamboul had vanished like a vision, and could only be traced by the line of heavy mist which skirted the horizon. The coast of Asia Minor was darkening as we advanced, wearing the dense drapery of vapour woven by the excessive heat—the mountain chain, fantastic in outline, stretched far as the eye could reach, and we had already left behind us the two quaint rocks which form so peculiar an object from the heights above Constantinople. But here the wind failed us altogether; the slumbering caïquejhes were awakened, the oars were plied, and we moved over the Sea of Marmora, of which I had such horrible memories, from the night of pain and peril that I had passed upon it on my way to Turkey, as though we had been traversing a lake.
Twilight darkened over us thus; and then a light breeze tempted us again to set the sails, and we glided along smoothly, skirting the rocky coast until we reached the point opposite Broussa; which, sloping rapidly downwards to the beach, suddenly revealed to us the glorious moon, that was rising broad and red immediately on our track, and tracing a line of light along the ripple which gleamed like gold.
After having sated myself with the bright moon, the myriad stars, and the mysterious mountains, at whose base the waves had hollowed caverns, through which they dashed with a noise like thunder, and once or twice almost deluded me into a belief that I could distinguish the sound of human voices issuing from their depths, I at length yielded to the excessive fatigue that overpowered me; and, wrapping myself closely in my mantle, I stretched myself along the bottom of the caïque, and did not again awaken until the boatmen announced our arrival at Moudania.
It was an hour past midnight, and not a sound came to us from the town. A score of Arabian barks were anchored off the shore, whose seaward houses overhang the water; the white minarets of the mosques were in strong relief upon the tall, dark, thickly-wooded mountains which rose immediately behind them, and whence the song of the nightingales swept sweetly and sadly over the ripple; and had we not been drenched with the heavy dew that had fallen during the night, I should have been quite satisfied to remain until daylight in the caïque, which soon entered a little creek in the centre of the town.