No prisoner is ever known to repass the gate of death; hence the Turks call their dismal fortress, the “towers of oblivion,” adopting the appellation given to them under the despotism of the Greek empire, when the castles were named “Lethé,” and for a similar reason.
During the struggles of the present sultan with the janissaries, it was his constant practice to have his opponents secretly arrested, and conveyed to this place. Every morning some Oda missed their old officers. They had been conveyed to this place after it was dark, entered the low doorway, and were seen no more. During this period, some Franks, who had taken a caïque to Buyukderé, where they were detained longer than they intended, were returning late. Boats are not permitted to pass the fortresses after sunset, and the signal-gun is fired: so they had to make their way secretly along, under cover of the shore. When arrived near the castles, they saw a large caïque advancing from Constantinople, and, to avoid detection, remained close under a rock, not far from the fatal gate. The strange boat approached, and landed just before it. Two distinguished-looking men, wrapped up in their pelisses, disembarked; they were held up by the arm on each side. One of them passed on in silence; the other sighed heavily as he approached, turned round, and seemed to cast a lingering look upon the world he was about to leave for ever. He then stooped his head, and disappeared, with his more impassive companion, under the fatal arch; the gate, groaning on its rusty hinges, closed behind them. The caïque returned immediately to Constantinople. The Franks then slipped past, and arrived without being stopped. The next morning it was known that two Binbashis, or colonels, who had great influence on their respective Odas, and strongly opposed the nizam geddite, were missing. They never re-appeared.
The navigation of the Bosphorus is the most lovely that ever invited a sail. Its length, in all its windings, is fifteen miles; and when the caïque glides down with the current, there is something exquisitely beautiful and grateful to the senses in every thing around. Nothing can exceed, in picturesque scenery, the whole coast on each side. It affords a continued succession of romantic wooded promontories, projecting into the stream, and presenting, at every winding of the strait, new and diversified objects. As you pass each headland, some placid bay opens to your view, in whose bosom a shaded village reposes. These are so numerous, that twenty-six occur from the Euxine to the Propontis; and in one line of coast there is a continuity of houses for six miles. From the centre of each village an enormous platanus generally rears its lofty head, and expands its wide extent of foliage: round its gigantic stem the houses are clustered, over which it forms a vast canopy, so that large villages are often covered with the shade of a single tree.
| T. Allom. | J. C. Bentley. |
THE GREAT CEMETERY OF SCUTARI.
Among the first objects that present themselves to a stranger entering Turkey, are the groves of cypress extending in dark masses along the shores. These are the last resting-places of the Turks; and their sad and solemn shade, far more gloomy than any which Christian usage has adopted, informs the traveller that he is now among a grave and serious people. The Turks permit the Jews, Armenians, Greeks, and Franks to plant their cemeteries with other trees, but reserve the cypress exclusively to themselves.
The cypress has, from early ages, been a funereal tree; the ancient Greeks and Romans so considered it; and the Turks, when they entered Europe, adopted it. Its solemn shade casting a dim religious light over the tombs it covers−its aromatic resin exuding from the bark, and correcting by its powerful odour the cadaverous smell exhaled from dissolving mortality−and, above all, its evergreen and unfading foliage, exhibiting an emblem of the immortal part, when the body below has mouldered into dust and perished,−have all recommended it to the Mussulman, and made it the object of his peculiar care.
It is an Oriental practice, to plant a tree at the birth, and another at the death, of any member of a family. When one, therefore, is deposited in the earth, the surviving relatives place a cypress at the foot, while a stone marks the head of the grave; and the pious son, whose birth his father had commemorated by a platanus, is now seen carefully watering the young tree which is to preserve the undying recollection of his parent. Thus it is that the cemetery extends by constant renovation. Whether it is that the soil is naturally congenial to these trees, or that it is enriched by the use to which it is applied, it is certain the cypress attains to majesty and beauty in these cemeteries, which are seen nowhere else; their stems measuring an immense circumference, and their pointed summits seeming to pierce the clouds, exhibit them as magnificent specimens of vegetable life. Sometimes they assume a different form, and the branches, shooting out horizontally, extend a lateral shade. These varieties have been by travellers mistaken for pines, which the Turks never admit into their cemeteries.