But, previously to casting anchor, we were obliged to pull considerably higher up the gulf in order to show ourselves at the Custom House, and to exhibit our Teskarè, or Turkish passport, as well as to submit our two travelling portmanteaux, and our provision-hamper, to the inspection of the examining officer. After a vast deal of knocking and calling, an individual was at length awakened, who came yawning into the caïque with a paper-lantern in his hand, and his eyes only half open; and who, after looking drowsily about him, murmured out “backschish,” and prepared to depart; upon which a few piastres were given to him, and he returned on shore.
The word backshich is the first of which a traveller learns the meaning in Turkey; it signifies fee, or present. The Pasha receives backshich for procuring a place or a pension for some petitioner; then, of course, it is a present, and precisely as unwelcome as it is unexpected: the boy who picks up your glove or your whip, as you ride along the street, demands backshich—he must be fee’d for his civility. Nothing is to be done in the country without backshich.
On entering the creek we despatched the servant and one of the caïquejhes to the house of the Greek Archbishop of Broussa, to whom we had brought a letter, and who had removed to the coast for the benefit of sea-bathing; but his Holiness was from home, and there was consequently no ingress for us. In this dilemma, for hotels there are none, we had no alternative but to accept for a few hours the hospitality of one of the boatmen, until we could procure horses to carry us on to Broussa; and we consequently made our debût in Asia Minor in an apartment up two flights of rickety stairs, walled with mud, and shivering under our footsteps. But it suffices to state that the caïquejhe was a Greek, for it to be understood at once by every Eastern traveller that the house was cleanly to perfection; and our reception by the hostess, even at that untoward hour, courteous and attentive.
Before the servant had brought the luggage up stairs, my father, worn out by fatigue, was sound asleep upon the divan; and, when the attendant had withdrawn, I also gladly prepared myself for the enjoyment of a few hours’ repose; and, casting off my shoes, and winding a shawl about my head, I took possession of the opposite side of the sofa, and should soon have followed his example, when I was aroused by the light foot of the caïquejhe’s wife in the apartment, who, opening a small chest, cast over me a sheet and coverlet as white as snow, and then retired as quietly as she came.
But that sheet and coverlet changed the whole tide of my feelings—the chest in which they had been kept was of cypress wood—they were strongly impregnated with its odour—I was exhausted by fatigue and excitement—and a thousand visions of death and the grave came over me in the half dreamy state in which I lay, that by no means added to my comfort.
With a morbidity of imagination to which I am unhappily subject, I followed up at length one fantastic and gloomy image, until I began to believe myself in a state of semi-existence, habiting with the dead; but the delusion was brief, for I was soon as disagreeably convinced that my affair was at present altogether with the living. I had been warned that Broussa was as celebrated for its bugs as for its baths, but I had never contemplated such martyrdom at Moudania! I sprang from the sofa, shook my habit with all my strength, and then, folding my fur pelisse for a pillow, I stretched myself on the carpet, and left the luxuries of the cushioned divan to my father; who, fortunately for him, proved to be a sounder sleeper than myself.
At five o’clock, the horses came to the door; and after partaking sparingly of the provisions which we had brought with us, we drank a cup of excellent coffee, prepared by our hostess, and descended to the street; where my European saddle, by no means a common sight at Moudania, had collected a crowd of idlers.
Had Cruikshank been by when we started, we should assuredly not have escaped his pungent pencil. My father led the van, mounted on a high-peaked country saddle, with a saddle-cloth of tarnished embroidery, and a pair of shovel stirrups; I followed, perched above a coarse woollen blanket, with my habit tucked up to preserve it from the stream of filth that was sluggishly making its way through the street; after me came our Greek servant, sitting upon a pile of cloaks and great coats, holding his pipe in one hand, and his umbrella in the other; and he was succeeded in his turn by the serudjhe who had charge of our luggage, and who rode between the portmanteaux, balancing the provision basket before him, dressed in a huge black turban, ample drawers of white cotton, and a vest of Broussa silk. The procession was completed by three attendants on foot, the owners of the horses; and thus we defiled through the narrow and dirty streets of Moudania, on our way to the ancient capital of the Ottoman Empire.
For a time the mists were so dense that, although we had the sea-sand beneath the hoofs of our horses, we could not distinguish the water; and, as we turned suddenly to the right, and traversed a vineyard all alive with labourers, the vapours were rolling off the sides of the hills immediately in front of us. Feathered even to their summits with trees, they appeared to rest against the thick folds of heavy white mist in which they had been enveloped during the night, and presented the most fantastic shapes. I never traversed a more lovely country; vineyards were succeeded by mulberry plantations and olive groves, gardens of cucumber plants, beet-root, and melons, stretches of rich corn land, and immense plains, hemmed in by gigantic mountains, of which the unredeemed portions were a perfect garden.
I have spoken, in my little work on Portugal, of the beauty of the wild flowers in that country, but I found that those of Asia even transcended them. Delicate flowing shrubs, herbs of delicious perfume, and blossoms of every dye, were about our path: the bright lilac-coloured gum-cistus, with a drop of gold in its centre—the snowy privet, with its scented cone—the wild hollyhock—the bindweed, as transparent and as variously coloured as in an European parterre—the mallow, with its pale petals of pink and white—the turquoise, as blue as a summer sky, and as large as a field-daisy—the foxglove, springing from amid the rocky masses by the wayside, like virtue struggling with adversity, and seeming doubly beautiful from the contrast; the bright yellow blossom which owes to its constantly vibrating petals the vulgar name of “woman’s tongue”—the sweet-scented purple starch-flower—wild roses, woodbine, and, above all, the passion-flower, somewhat smaller than that cultivated in Europe, but retaining perfectly its pale tints and graceful character, were mingled with a thousand others that were new to me.