Thereupon the Sultan expressed a wish that Dr. Hepworth and myself should come up to the Palace and be received by him. After duly considering the matter, we replied jointly that, as His Majesty had asked us to render a service to truth and justice by our investigations in his Asiatic dominions, we thought it best to leave Constantinople without seeing him; for, if we were received in audience, it would get known and might be construed into our having only acted as his agents—a surmise which would certainly discount the value of Dr. Hepworth’s impartial account of our experiences. The Sultan seemed to recognize the force of our contention, for he sent us a kindly message embodying his best wishes for our journey, and expressing the hope that we might some day come again to Constantinople. In order once for all to dispose of the idle rumours which were current at the time, I may add that neither Dr. Hepworth nor myself accepted any memento or present whatsoever from the Sultan. A decoration which His Majesty subsequently sent to Paris for Mrs. Hepworth was returned through the proprietor of the New York Herald.
Before leaving I received the following letter from Munir Pasha:
Palais Impérial de Yildiz, Cabinet du Grand Maître des Cérémonies.
“Cher Monsieur Whitman,
“Je vous envoie par le porteur une lettre que j’ai écrite à l’adresse de Monsieur Gordon Bennett, et qui est relative à votre récent voyage en Anatolie.
“En vous priant de vouloir bien faire parvenir cette missive à sa destination, je me plais à vous dire combien je me félicite des relations personnelles que j’ai eu l’honneur d’avoir avec vous, et à vous assurer du bon souvenir que je garderai de ces relations.
“Votre dévoué,
“Munir.”
Lundi, 12 Janvier 1898.
Most of us can recall the peculiar sensation we experience on returning into the fresh air from the fetid atmosphere of an ill-ventilated apartment, the noxious nature of which we had scarcely realized as long as we remained there. So also the true character of Eastern conditions only seemed to come home to us after we had left the country. At least, speaking for my travelling companion and myself, we only seemed to realize the treeless desolation, the wilderness of roadless Kurdistan, as we were passing through that beautiful, richly verdured section of Austria and South Germany traversed by the Orient Express. Then it was that the contrast enabled us to appreciate as perhaps never before the benefits of the high state of European land culture. The same feeling might well suggest itself to the traveller in passing from Dover to London through Kent, the Garden of England. On arrival in London, however, other features of Eastern life forced themselves on our memory and suggested comparisons less flattering to our own social conditions. Needless to say they were those which account for the strange fascination the East exercises even upon some of the most cultured European travellers.