Summer Cruise in the Mediterranean on board an American frigate

by Nathaniel Parker Willis

Whatever else we may deny the Turk, we must allow him to possess a genuine love for rural beauty. The cemeteries we have described, the choice of his dwelling on the Bosphorus, and his habit of resorting, whenever he has leisure, to some lovely scene to sit the livelong day in the sunshine, are proof enough. And then all over the hills, both in Anatolia and Roumelia, wherever there is a finer view or greener spot than elsewhere, you find the small sairgah, the grassy platform on which he spreads his carpet, and you may look in vain for a spot better selected for his purpose.

Things are sooner seen than described (I wish it were as agreeable to describe as to see them!) and all this digression, and much more which I spare the reader, is the fruit of five minutes’ reflection while the suridjee tightens his girths in the Armenian burying-ground. The turbaned Turk once more in his saddle, then we will canter on some three miles, if you please, over as naked a heath as the sun looks upon, to the “Valley of Sweet Waters.” I have described this, I think, before. We five to learn, and my intelligent friend tells me, as we draw rein, and wind carefully down the steep descent, that the site of the Sultan’s romantic serai, in the bosom of the valley, was once occupied by the first printing-press established in Turkey—the fruit of an embassy to the Court of Louis the Fifteenth, by Mehemet Effendi, in the reign of Achmet the Third. And thus having delivered myself of a fact, a thing for which I have a natural antipathy in writing, let us gallop up the velvet brink of the Barbyses.

We had kept our small Turkish horses to their speed for a mile, with the enraged suridjee crying after us at the top of his voice, “Ya-wash! ya-wash!” (slowly, slowly!) when, at a bend of the valley, right through the midst of its velvet verdure, came rolling along an aruba, loaded with ladies. This pretty word signifies in Turkish a carriage, and the thing itself reminds you directly of the fantastic vehicles in which fairy queens come upon the stage. First appear two grey oxen, with their tails tied to a hoop bent back from the bend of the pole, their heads and horns and the long curve of the hoop decked with red and yellow tassels so profusely, that it looks at a distance like a walking clump of hollyhocks. As you pass the poor oxen (almost lifted off their hind legs by the straining of the hoop upon their tails), a four-wheeled vehicle makes its appearance, the body and wheels carved elaborately and gilt all over, and the crimson cover rolled up just so far as to show a cluster of veiled women, cross-legged upon cushions within, and riding in perfect silence.[^[17]] A eunuch or a very old Turk walks at the side, and thus the Moslem ladies “take kaif,” as it is called—in other words go a pleasuring. But a prettier sight than this gay affair rolling noiselessly over the pathless greensward of the Valley of Sweet Waters, you may not see in a year’s travel.

A beautiful Englishwoman, mounted (if I may dare to write it) on a more beautiful Arabian, came flying toward us as we approached the head of the valley, the long feathers in her riding cap all but brushing our admiring eyes out as she passed, and other living thing met we none till we drew up in the edge of the forest of Belgrade. A half hour brought us to a bold descent, and through the openings in the wood we caught a glimpse of the celebrated retreat of Lady Montagu, a village, tossed into the lap of as bright a dell as the sun looks upon in his journey. A lively brook, that curls about in the grass like a silver flower worked into the green carpet, overcomes at last its unwillingness to depart, and vanishes from the fair scene under a clump of willows; and, as if it knew it was sitting for its picture, there must needs be a group of girls with their trowsers tucked up to the knee, washing away so busily in the brook, that they did not see that half a dozen Frank horsemen were upon them, and their forgotten yashmacks all fallen about their shoulders!

We dismounted, and finding (what I never saw before) a red-headed Frenchman, walking about in his slippers, we inquired for the house of Lady Montagu. He had never heard of her! A cottage, a little separated from the village, untenanted, and looking as if it should be hers, stood on a swell of the valley, and we found by the scrawled names and effusions of travellers upon the gates, that we were not mistaken in selecting it for the shrine of our sentiment.

I am sorry to be obliged to add, that in the romantic forest of Belgrade, we listened to the calls of mortal hunger. With some very sour wine, however, we did drink to the memory of Lady Mary and the “fair Fatima,” washing down with the same draught as brown bread as ever I saw, and some very indifferent filberts.

We mounted once more, and followed our silent guide across the brook, politely taking it below the spot where our naiads of the stream were washing, and following its slender valley for a mile, arrived at one of the gigantic bendts, for which the place is famous. To give romance its proper precedence over reality, however, I must first mention, that on the soft bank of the artificial lake, which I shall presently describe, Constantine Ghika, disguised as a shepherd, stole an interview with the fair Veronica, and in the wild forest to the right, they wandered till they lost their way; an adventure of which they only regretted the sequel, finding it again! If you have not read “The Armenians,” this pretty turn in my travels is thrown away upon you.

The valley of Belgrade widens and rounds into a lake-shaped hollow just here, and across it, to form a reservoir for the supply of the city by the aqueducts of Valens and Justinian, is built a gigantic marble wall. There is no water just now, which, for a lake, is rather a deficiency; but the vast white wall only stands up against the sky, bolder and more towering, and coming suddenly upon it in that lonely place, you might take it, if the “fine phrensy” were on you, for the barrier of some enchanted demesne.

We passed on into the forest, winding after an almost invisible path, up hill and down dale, till we came to the second bendt. This, and the third, which is near by, are larger and of more ornamental architecture than the first, and the forest around them is one in which, if he turned his back on the lofty walls, a wild Indian would feel himself at home. I have not seen such trees since I left America; clear of all underwood, and the long vistas broken only by the trunk of some noble oak, fallen aslant, it has for miles the air of a grand old wilderness, unprofaned by axe or fire. In the midst of such scenery as this, to ride up to the majestic bendt, faced with a front like a temple, and crowned by a marble balustrade, with a salient and raised crescent in the centre, like a throne for some monarch of the forest, it must be a more staid imagination than mine that would not feel a touch of the knight of La Mancha, and spur up to find a gate, and a bugle to blow a blast for the warder! It is just the looking place I imagined for an enchanted castle, when reading my first romances.

Farther on in the forest we found several circular structures, like baths, sunk in the earth, with flights of steps winding to the bottom, but with the same gigantic trees growing at their very rim, and nothing near them to show the purpose of their costly masonry. We stopped to form a conjecture or two with the aid of the genus loci; but the surly suridjee, probably at a loss to comprehend the object of looking into a hole full of dead leaves, chose to put his horse to a gallop; and having no Veronica to make a romance of a lost path, we left our conjectures to gallop after.