We approach Roumeli Hissar, a jutting point almost meeting a similar projection from the Asian shore, crowned, like its vis-a-vis, with a formidable battery. The Bospborus here is but half an arrow-flight in width, and Europe and Asia, here at their nearest approach, stand looking each other in the face, like boxers, with foot forward, fist doubled, and a most formidable row of teeth on either side. The current scampers through between the two castles, as if happy to get out of the way, and, up-stream, it is hard pulling for a caique. They are beautiful points, however, and I am ashamed of my coarse simile, when I remember how green was the foliage that half-enveloped the walls, and how richly picturesque the hills behind them. Here, in the European castle, were executed the greater part of the janisaries, hundreds in a day, of the manliest frames in the empire, thrown into the rapid Bosphorus, headless and stripped, to float, unmourned and unregarded, to the sea.
Above Roumeli-Hissar, the Bosphorus spreads again, and a curving bay, which is set like a mirror, in a frame of the softest foliage and verdure, is pointed out as a spot at which the crusaders, Godfrey of Bouillon, and Raymond of Toulouse, encamped on their way to Palestine. The hills beyond this are loftier, and the Giant’s Mountain, upon which the Russian army encamped at their late visit to the Porte, would be a respectable eminence in any country. At its foot, the Strait expands into quite a lake; and on the European side, in a scoop of the shore, exquisitely placed, stand the diplomatic villages of Terapia and Buyukdere. The English, French, Russian, Austrian and other flags were flying over half-a-dozen of the most desirable residences I have seen since Italy.
We soon pulled the remaining mile or two, and our spent caikjees drew breath, and lay on their oars in the Black Sea. The waves were breaking on the “blue Symplegades,” a mile on our left; and, before us, toward the Cimmerian, Bosphorus; and, south, toward Colchis and Trebizond, spread one broad, blue waste of waters, apparently as limitless as the ocean. The Black Sea is particularly blue.
We turned our prow to the west, and I sighed to remember that I had reached my farthest step into the East. Henceforth I shall be on the return. I sent a long look over the waters to the bright lands beyond, so famed in history and fiction, and wishing for even a metamorphosis into the poor sea-bird flying above us (whose travelling expenses Nature pays), I lay back in the boat with a “change in the spirit of my dream.”
We stopped on the Anatolian shore to visit the ruins of a fine old Genoese castle, which looks over the Black Sea, and after a lunch upon grapes and coffee, at a small village at the foot of the hill on which it stands, we embarked and followed our companions. Running down with the current to Buyukdere, we landed and walked along the thronged and beautiful shore to Terapia, meeting hundreds of fair Armenians and Greeks (all beautiful, it seemed to me), issuing forth for their evening promenade, and, with a call of ceremony on the English ambassador, for whom I had letters, we again took to the caique, and fled down with the current like a bird. Oh what a sunset was there!
We were to dine and pass the night at the country-house of an English gentleman at Bebec, a secluded and lovely village, six or eight miles from Constantinople. We reached the landing as the stars began to glimmer, and, after one of the most agreeable and hospitable entertainments I remember to have shared, we took an early breakfast with our noble host, and returned to the ship. I could wish my friends no brighter passage in their lives than such an excursion as mine to the Black Sea.
LETTER XXXV.
The Golden Horn and its Scenery—The Sultan’s Wives and Arabians—The Valley of Sweet Waters—Beauty of the Turkish Minarets—The Mosque of Sulymanye—Mussulmans at their Devotions—The Muezzin—The Bazaar of the Opium-eaters—The Mad House of Constantinople, and Description of its Inmates—Their Wretched Treatment—The Hippodrome and the Mosque of Sultan Achmet—The Janizaries—Reflections on the Past, the Present, and the Future.