LETTER XLV.
Natural Statue of Niobe—The Thorn of Syria and its Tradition—Approach to Magnesia—Hereditary Residence of the Family of Bey-Oglou—Character of its Present Occupant—The Truth about Oriental Caravanserais—Comforts and Appliances they yield to Travellers—Figaro of the Turks—The Pilaw—Morning Scene at the Departure—Playful Familiarity of a Solemn old Turk—Magnificent Prospect from Mount Sypilus.
Three or four hours more of hard riding brought us to a long glen, opening upon the broad plains of Lydia. We were on the look-out here for the “natural statue of Niobe,” spoken of by the ancient writers as visible from the road in this neighbourhood; but there was nothing that looked like her, unless she was, as the poet describes her, a “Niobe, all tears,” and runs down toward the Sarabat, in what we took to be only a very pretty mountain rivulet. It served for simple fresh water to our volunteer companion, who darted off an hour before sunset, and had finished his ablutions and prayers, and was rising from his knees as we overtook him upon its grassy border. Almost the only thing that grows in these long mountain passes, is the peculiar thorn of Syria, said to be the same of which our Saviour’s crown was plaited. It differs from the common species, in having a hooked thorn alternating with the straight, adding cruelly to its power of laceration. It is remarkable that the flower, at this season withering on the bush, is a circular golden-coloured leaf, resembling exactly the radiated glory usually drawn around the heads of Christ and the Virgin.
Amid a sunset of uncommon splendour, firing every peak of the opposite range of hills with an effulgent red, and filling the valley between with an atmosphere of heavenly purple, we descended into the plain.
Mount Sypilus, in whose rocks the magnetic ore is said to have been first discovered, hung over us in bold precipices; and, rounding a projecting spur, we came suddenly in sight of the minarets and cypresses of Magnesia (not pronounced as if written in an apothecary’s bill), the ancient capital of the Ottoman empire.
On the side of the ascent, above the town, we observed a large isolated mansion, surrounded with a wall, and planted about with noble trees, looking, with the exception that it was too freshly painted, like one of the fine old castle palaces of Italy. It was something very extraordinary for the East, where no man builds beyond the city wall, and no house is very much larger than another. It was the hereditary residence, we afterwards discovered, of almost the only noble family in Turkey—that of the Bey-Oglou. You will recollect Byron’s allusion to it in the “Bride of Abydos:”
“We Moslem reck not much of blood,
But yet the race of Karaisman,