THE VILLAGE OF BABEC,
ON THE BOSPHORUS.
In a very deep recess, formed by the expansion of the Bosphorus, immediately above the Buyuk Akendisi, or “Great Rapid,” and between it and the Roumeli Hissar, or Castle of Europe, are the bay and village of Babec. The latter extends along one side of it, having a level quay in front, and generally exhibits a scene of busy population, with its caïques and fishery. Beyond it rise the wooded hills which skirt the shores of the Bosphorus. Here the steep ascent is clothed with a very dense growth of trees, casting their dark shadows on the waters below, which wash the margin of the deep recess of the bay, and give it a peculiarly sequestered and solitary appearance. Here, in the darkest shade, is seen a lonely kiosk, which strikes the traveller passing in a caïque, as having something more than ordinary connected with it. The kiosk is shut in with walls, the entrance entirely closed up, and no human being is ever seen to enter or depart from it. The jealous precaution usually visible about a Turkish house always has a desolate and repulsive aspect; but this kiosk, it has been remarked, has a solitude even more than Turkish, and, without the usual marks of desertion, decay, and dilapidation, it looks as if abandoned by inhabitants, or devoted to some secret or mysterious purpose. It is the retreat of Turkish diplomacy−the appointed spot for secret negociations.
Mystery and deception, the wheels on which it usually moves, are here practically exemplified. The bureaus of the Porte are appointed for the transaction of ordinary business, but on extraordinary occasions it is transferred to this place; and this solitary recess of the Bosphorus is resorted to in order to prevent any possibility of the secret transpiring. When it is necessary to meet a foreign minister, on any affair of importance, he is directed to repair to this place. Hither he comes in his caïque, divested of pomp or parade, and endeavouring to pass without any notice. He climbs the rapid, and creeps along the shore of this sequestered bay, to the mysterious kiosk, and is, with due precaution, admitted. He finds, within, the reis effendi, or minister for foreign affairs, who has approached by land with similar precaution. The doors are closed, and the conference commences. When the affair is arranged, the diplomatists separate, and the kiosk is abandoned, and closed up till another mysterious affair renders another mysterious conference at this place necessary. This attempt at concealment is highly characteristic of the court and the people; but it is altogether defeated. The prying jealousy of the ministers of the European powers resident at Constantinople, is continually on the alert: the chief dragoman of one mission makes a daily report to his ambassador of what every other is doing, or about to do: he visits the bureaus of the Porte, and worms out the most secret intentions; and while the principals are shut up at Babec, as they suppose, unknown to all the world, the tattling dragomans are every where disclosing the subject they are discussing, and the conference at Babec is no more secret than the news of a public coffee-house.
| T. Allom. | W. J. Cook. |
THE RUINS OF EPHESUS.
THE CASTLE OF AIASALUK ON THE DISTANCE.
ASIA MINOR.
This city is not only celebrated in profane history, which ascribes its foundation to the Amazons, but is rendered interesting to mankind, for being commemorated in the Sacred Scriptures by many important recollections. When Christianity began to expand itself in Asia, seven churches were founded, eminently distinguished among the early Christians, as fountains, whence the light of the gospel should flow upon a benighted world. The first and chief of these was the great city of Ephesus. When St. John in his Apocalypse addresses these seven churches, the first he named was that of Ephesus. To the professors of Christianity there, he gives a high character, intimating the reformation which the infant gospel had already effected among the Gentiles. “I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear those that are evil.” To this church, St. Paul addressed his epistle when in bonds at Rome, to guard them against that false doctrine that was even then beginning to taint the purity of the gospel. This city he visited in his travels, and adds the testimony of sacred history to that of profane, to the estimation in which the great heathen temple was held; and from this city he took his final departure at that affecting moment, when they kneeled down, and prayed on the sea-shore, “and wept sore for the words which he spake−that they should see his face no more.” This city once had a bishop, the angel of the church, Timothy, the beloved disciple of St. John; and tradition reports that it was honoured with the last days of both these great men, and of the Mother of our Lord.