The sultan, I think unwisely, has introduced the European uniform into his army. With the exception of the Tunisian cap, which is substituted for a thick and handsome turban, the dress is such as is worn by the soldiers of the French army. Their tailors are of course bad, and their figures, accustomed only to the loose and graceful costume of the East, are awkward and constrained. I never saw so uncouth a set of fellows as the five thousand Mussulmans in this army of the Dardanelles; and yet in their Turkish trowsers and turban, with the belt stuck full of arms, and their long moustache, they would be as martial-looking troops as ever followed a banner.
We embarked at sunset to return to the ship. The shell-shaped caique, with her tall sharp extremities and fantastic sail, yielded to the rapid current of the Hellespont; and our two boatmen, as handsome a brace of Turks as were ever drawn in a picture, pulled their legs under them more closely, and commenced singing the alternate stanzas of a villainous duet. The helmsman’s part was rather humorous, and his merry black eye redeemed it somewhat, but his fellow was as grave as a dervish, and howled as if he were ferrying over Xerxes after his defeat.
If I were to live in the East as long as the wandering Jew, I think these heavenly sunsets, evening after evening, scarce varying by a shade, would never become familiar to my eye. They surprise me day after day, like some new and brilliant phenomenon, though the thoughts which they bring, as it were by a habit contracted of the hour, are almost always the same. The day, in these countries where life flows so thickly, is engrossed, and pretty busily too, by the present. The past comes up with the twilight, and wherever I may be, and in whatever scene mingling, my heart breaks away, and goes down into the west with the sun. I am at home as duly as the bird settles to her nest.
It was natural in paying the boatman, after such a musing passage, to remember the poetical justice of Uhland in crossing the ferry:—
“Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee!
Take! I give it willingly;
For, invisibly to thee,
Spirits twain have crossed with me!”
I should have paid for one other seat, at least, by this fanciful tariff. Our unmusical Mussulmans were content, however, and we left them to pull back against the tide, by a star that cast a shadow like a meteor.