The Pacha of the Dardanelles has honoured us with a visit. He came in a long caique, pulled by twenty stout rascals, his Excellency of “two tails” sitting on a rich carpet on the bottom of the boat, with his boy of a year old in the same uniform as himself, and his suite of pipe and slipper-bearers, dwarf and executioner, sitting cross-legged about him. He was received with the guard and all the honour due to his rank. His face is that of a cold, haughty, and resolute, but well-born man, and his son is like him. He looked at everything attentively, without expressing any surprise, till he came to the pianoforte, which one of the ladies played to his undisguised delight. It was the first he had ever seen. He inquired, through his interpreter, if she had not been all her life in learning.
The poet says, “The seasons of the year come in like masquers.” To one who had made their acquaintance in New-England, most of the months would literally pass incog. in Italy. But here is honest October, the same merry old gentleman, though I meet him in Asia, and I remember him, last year, at the baths of Lucca, as unchanged as here. It has been a clear, bright, invigorating day, with a vitality in the air as rousing to the spirits as a blast from the “horn of Astolpho.” I can remember just such a day ten years ago. It is odd how a little sunshine will cling to the memory when loves and hates that, in their time, convulsed the very soul, are so easily forgotten.
We heard yesterday that there was a Turkish village seven or eight miles in the mountains on the Asian side, and, as a variety to the promenade on the quarter-deck, a ramble was proposed to it.
We landed, this morning, on the bold shore of the Dardanelles, and, climbing up the face of a sand-hill, struck across a broad plain, through bush and brier, for a mile. On the edge of a ravine we found a pretty road, half-hedged over with oak and hemlock, and a mounted Turk, whom we met soon after, with a gun across his pummel, and a goose looking from his saddle-bag, directed us to follow it till we reached the village.
It was a beautiful path, flecked with the shade of leaves of all the variety of eastern trees, and refreshed with a fountain at every mile. About half way we stopped at a spring welling from a rock, under a large fig-tree, from which the water poured, as clear as crystal, into seven tanks, and one after the other rippling away from the last into a wild thicket, whence a stripe of brighter green marked its course down the mountain. It was a spot worthy of Tempé. We seated ourselves on the rim of the rocky basin, and, with a drink of bright water, and a half hour’s repose, re-commenced our ascent, blessing the nymph of the fount, like true pilgrims of the East.
A few steps beyond we met a caravan of the pacha’s tithe-gatherers, with mules laden with grapes; the turbaned and showily-armed drivers, as they came winding down the dell, produced the picturesque effect of a theatrical ballet. They laid their hands on their breasts, with grave courtesy, as they approached, and we helped ourselves to the ripe, blushing clusters, as the panniers went by, with Arcadian freedom.
We reached the summit of the ridge a little before noon, and turned our faces back for a moment to catch the cool wind from the Hellespont. The Dardanelles came winding out from the hills, just above Abydos, and sweeping past the upper castles of Europe and Asia, rushed down by Tenedos into the Archipelago. Perhaps twenty miles of its course lay within our view. Its colours were borrowed from the divine sky above, and the rainbow is scarce more varied or brighter. The changing purple and blue of the mid-stream, specked with white crests, the chrysoprase green of the shallows, and the dyes of the various depths along the shore, gave it the appearance of a vein of transparent marble, inlaid through the valley. The frigate looked like a child’s boat on its bosom. To our left, the tombs of Ajax and Achilles were just distinguishable in the plains of the Scamander, and Troy (if Troy ever stood) stood back from the sea, and the blue-wreathed isles of the Archipelago bounded the reach of the eye. It was a view that might “cure a month’s grief in a day.”
We descended now into a kind of cradle valley, yellow with rich vineyards. It was alive with people gathering in the grapes. The creaking wagons filled the road, and shouts and laughter rang over the mountain-sides merrily. The scene would have been Italian, but for the turbans peering out everywhere from the leaves, and those diabolical-looking buffaloes in the wagons. The village was a mile or two before us, and we loitered on, entering here and there a vineyard, where the only thing evidently grudged us was our peep at the women. They scattered like deer as we stepped over the walls.
Near the village we found a grave Turk, of whom one of the officers made some inquiries, which were a part of our errand to the mountains. It may spoil the sentiment of my description, but, in addition to the poetry of the ramble, we were to purchase beef for the mess. His bullocks were out at grass (feeding in pastoral security, poor things!), and he invited us to his house, while he sent his boy to drive them in. I recognised them, when they came, as two handsome steers, which had completed the beauty of an open glade, in the centre of a clump of forest trees, on our route. The pleasure they have afforded to the eye will be repeated upon the palate—a double destiny not accorded to all beautiful creatures.