Summer Cruise in the Mediterranean on board an American frigate

by Nathaniel Parker Willis

Our host led us up a flight of rough stone steps to the second story of his house, where an old woman sat upon her heels, rolling out paste, and a younger one nursed a little Turk at her bosom. They had, like every man, woman, or child I have seen in this country, superb eyes and noses. No chisel could improve the meanest of them in these features. Our friend’s wife seemed ashamed to be caught with her face uncovered, but she offered us cushions on the floor before she retired, and her husband followed up her courtesy with his pipe.

We went thence to the café, where a bubbling hookah, a cup of coffee, and a divan, refreshed us a little from our fatigues. While the rest of the party were lingering over their pipes, I took a turn through the village in search of the house of the Aga. After strolling up and down the crooked streets for half an hour, a pretty female figure, closely enveloped in her veil, and showing, as she ran across the street, a dainty pair of feet in small yellow slippers, attracted me into the open court of the best-looking house in the village. The lady had disappeared, but a curious-looking carriage, lined with rich Turkey carpeting and cushions, and covered with red curtains, made to draw close in front, stood in the centre of the court. I was going up to examine it, when an old man, with a beard to his girdle, and an uncommonly rich turban, stepped from the house and motioned me angrily away. A large wolf-dog, which he held by the collar, added emphasis to his command, and I retreated directly. A giggle and several female voices from the closely-latticed window, rather aggravated the mortification. I had intruded on the premises of the Aga, a high offence in Turkey, when a woman is in the case.

It was “deep i’ the afternoon,” when we arrived at the beach, and made signal for a boat. We were on board as the sky kindled with the warm colours of an Asian sunset—a daily offset to our wearisome detention which goes far to keep me in temper. My fear is that the commodore’s patience is not “so good a continuer” as this “vento maledetto,” as the pilot calls it, and in such a case I lose Constantinople most provokingly.

Walked to the Upper Castle Asia, some eight miles above our anchorage. This is the main town on the Dardanelles, and contains forty or fifty thousand inhabitants. Sestos and Abydos are a mile or two farther up the Strait.

We kept along the beach for an hour or two, passing occasionally a Turk on horseback, till we were stopped by a small and shallow creek without a bridge, just on the skirts of the town. A woman with one eye peeping from her veil, dressed in a tunic of fine blue cloth, stood at the head of a large drove of camels on the other side, and a beggar with one eye, smoked his pipe on the sand at a little distance. The water was knee-deep, and we were hesitating on the brink, when the beggar offered to carry us across on his back—a task he accomplished (there were six of us) without taking his pipe from his mouth.

I tried in vain to get a peep at the camel-driver’s wife or daughter, but she seemed jealous of showing even her eyebrow, and I followed on to the town. The Turks live differently from every other people, I believe. You walk through their town and see every individual in it, except perhaps the women of the pacha. Their houses are square boxes, the front side of which lifts on a hinge in the day-time, exposing the whole interior, with its occupants squatted in the corners or on the broad platform where their trades are followed. They are scarce larger than boxes in the theatre, and the roof projects into the middle of the street, meeting that of the opposite neighbour, so that the pavement between is always dark and cool. The three or four Turkish towns I have seen, have the appearance of cabins thrown up hastily after a fire. You would not suppose they were intended to last more than a month at the farthest.

We roved through the narrow streets an hour or more, admiring the fine bearded old Turks, smoking cross-legged in the cafés, the slipper-makers with their gay morocco wares in goodly rows around them, the wily Jews with their high caps and caftans (looking, crouched among their merchandise, like the “venders of old bottles and abominable lies,” as they are drawn in the plays of Queen Elizabeth’s time), the muffled and gliding spectres of the Moslem women, and the livelier-footed Greek girls, in their velvet jackets and braided hair, and by this time we were kindly disposed to our dinners.

On our way to the consul’s, where we were to dine, we passed a mosque. The minaret (a tall peaked tower, about of the shape and proportions of a pencil-case) commanded a view down the principal streets; and a stout fellow, with a sharp clear voice, leaned over the balustrade at the top, crying out the invitation to prayer in a long drawling sing-song, that must have been audible on the other side of the Hellespont. Open porches, supported by a paling, extended all around the church, and the floors were filled with kneeling Turks, with their pistols and ataghans lying beside them. I had never seen so picturesque a congregation. The slippers were left in hundreds at the threshold, and the bare and muscular feet and legs, half concealed by the full trowsers, supported as earnest a troop of worshippers as ever bent forehead to the ground. I left them rising from a flat prostration, and hurried after my companions to dinner.

Our consul of the Dardanelles is an American. He is absent just now, in search of a runaway female slave of the sultan’s; and his wife, a gracious Italian, full of movement and hospitality, does the honours of his house in his absence. He is a physician as well as consul and slave-catcher, and the presents of a hand-organ, a French clock, and a bronze standish, rather prove him to be a favourite with the “brother of the sun.”

We were smoking the hookah after dinner, when an intelligent-looking man, of fifty or so, came in to pay us a visit. He is at present an exile from Constantinople, by order of the Grand Seignior, because a brother physician, his friend, failed in an attempt to cure one of the favourites of the imperial harem! This is what might be called “sympathy upon compulsion.” It is unnecessary, one would think, to make friendship more dangerous than common human treachery renders it already.