Summer Cruise in the Mediterranean on board an American frigate

by Nathaniel Parker Willis

We were sixteen, from the ship, and our boat was attended by his interpreter, the general of his troops, the governor of Bournabashi (the name of the Turkish town near Troy), and a host of attendants on foot and horseback. His cook had been sent forward at daylight with the provisions.

The handsome Bey came to the door, and helped to mount us upon his own horses, and we rode on, with the whole population of the village assembled to see our departure. We forded the Scamander, near the town, and pushed on at a hard gallop over the plain. The Bey soon overtook us upon a fleet grey mare, caparisoned with red trappings, holding an umbrella over his head, which he courteously offered to the commodore on coming up. We followed a grass path, without hill or stone, for nine or ten miles, and after having passed one or two hamlets, with their open threshing-floors, and crossed the Simois, with the water to our saddle-girths, we left a slight rising ground by a sudden turn, and descended to a cluster of trees, where the Turks sprang from their horses, and made signs for us to dismount.

It was one of nature’s drawing-rooms. Thickets of brush and willows enclosed a fountain, whose clear waters were confined in a tank, formed of marble slabs, from the neighbouring ruins. A spreading tree above, and soft meadow-grass to its very tip, left nothing to wish but friends and a quiet mind to perfect its beauty. The cook’s fires were smoking in the thicket, the horses were grazing without saddle or bridle in the pasture below, and we laid down upon the soft Turkish carpets, spread beneath the trees, and reposed from our fatigues for an hour.

The interpreter came when the sun had slanted a little across the trees, and invited us to the Bey’s gardens, hard by. A path, overshadowed with wild brush, led us round the little meadow to a gate, close to the fountain-head of the Scamander. One of the common cottages of the country stood upon the left, and in front of it a large arbour, covered with a grape-vine, was under-laid with cushions and carpets. Here we reclined, and coffee was brought us with baskets of grapes, figs, quinces, and pomegranates, the Bey and his officers waiting on us themselves with amusing assiduity. The people of the house, meantime, were sent to the fields for green corn, which was roasted for us, and this with nuts, wine, and conversation, and a ramble to the source of the Simois, which bursts from a cleft in the rock very beautifully, whiled away the hours till dinner.

About four o’clock we returned to the fountain. A white muslin cloth was laid upon the grass between the edge and the overshadowing tree, and all around it were spread the carpets upon which we were to recline while eating. Wine and melons were cooling in the tank, and plates of honey and grapes, and new-made butter (a great luxury in the Archipelago), stood on the marble rim. The dinner might have fed Priam’s army. Half a lamb, turkeys, and chickens, were the principal meats, but there was, besides, “a rabble rout” of made dishes, peculiar to the country, of ingredients at which I could not hazard even a conjecture.

We crooked our legs under us with some awkwardness, and producing our knives and forks (which we had brought with the advice of the interpreter), commenced, somewhat abated in appetite by too liberal a lunch. The Bey and his officers sitting upright with, their feet under them, pinched off bits of meat dexterously with the thumb and forefinger, passing from one to the other a dish of rice, with a large spoon, which all used indiscriminately. It is odd that eating with the fingers seemed only disgusting to me in the Bey. His European dress probably made the peculiarity more glaring. The fat old governor who sat beside me was greased to the elbows, and his long grey beard was studded with rice and drops of gravy to his girdle. He rose when the meats were removed, and waddled off to the stream below, where a wash in the clean water made him once more a presentable person.

It is a Turkish custom to rise and retire while the dishes are changing, and after a little ramble through the meadow, we returned to a lavish spread of fruits and honey, which concluded the repast.

It is doubted where Troy stood. The reputed site is a rising ground, near the fountain of Bournabashi, to which we strolled after dinner. We found nothing but quantities of fragments of columns, believed by antiquaries to be the ruins of a city that sprung up and died long since Troy.

We mounted and rode home by a round moon, whose light filled the air like a dust of phosphoric silver. The plains were in a glow with it. Our Indian summer nights, beautiful as they are, give you no idea of an Asian moon.

The Bey’s rooms were lit, and we took coffee with him once more, and, fatigued with pleasure and excitement, got to our boats, and pulled up against the arrowy current of the Dardanelles to the frigate.