To the Asiatic Sweet Waters you must go by boat, or rather by caique, a peculiar little frail cockle-shell of a conveyance, rowed by the most truculent-looking and unmitigated ruffians, Turkish or Grecian, to be found on any waters or in any land, Christian or heathen. Picturesque in costume and exceedingly ragged and dirty, with the most cut-throat expression of face possible to conceive of, when you entrust your person and purse to their tender mercies you involuntarily remember with satisfaction that you insured your life for a good round sum before leaving your native country, and that this is one of the risks it covers.
To the European Sweet Waters you may go by carriage, but if wise will go there also by caique; for even the corduroy roads of our Southern country, so famous for their dislocating qualities, can be paralleled by the so-called road over which once (and once only), for our sins, we suffered ourselves to be shaken, not driven. It is the fashion at Constantinople to visit the Asiatic Sweet Waters only on Friday (the Mussulman Sabbath), and the European Sweet Waters on Sunday; and on those days all that may be seen of Turkish ladies is on full exhibition.
If you select the Asiatic Sweet Waters for your visit, you go down to the wharf at Tophane, where the rival boatmen (caiquejees) raise as loud a din and make as fierce a fight for your person and piastres as you ever encountered on your arrival at New York in a European steamer from rival hack-drivers or hotel "touters." Pulled, pushed and shoved about in all directions as fiercely as ever was the body of Patroclus in the Iliad, when Greek and Trojan contended for possession of it, you are at last hustled into a caique, and deposited in the bottom on soft cushions, your back supported by the end of the boat, your face to the two boatmen. The caique is gayly ornamented and pretty to look at, but it is the crankiest and tickliest of all nautical inventions—more resembling a Canadian birch-bark canoe than any other craft you are acquainted with. Admiring the view, you partially rise up and lean your elbow on the side of the boat. A warning cry from your boatmen and a sudden dip of your frail bark, which almost upsets you head-foremost to feed the fishes of the Bosphorus, admonish you to sit quietly, and you can scarcely venture to stir again during the long row. The caique is long and very narrow, and sharp at both ends—pointed, in fact. It is boarded over at these ends to prevent shipping seas. These planks are prettily varnished, with gilded rails, which give the boat a gay look.
The men row vigorously, and the frail skiff skims along the water at a rate of speed equal to an express-train. But the rushing of the rippling waters past the boat is the chief indication of the rapidity of our progress, so smoothly do we glide along. One peculiarity of the caique is that there are no rowlocks for the oars, which are held by a loop of leather fastened on the boat.
All the senses are soothed and steeped in Elysium during this rapid transit. The eye lazily runs over the squat-looking red houses with flat roofs which line the shore, to rest on the dark cypress trees which fill the intervening spaces, with the gilded balconies of some pleasure-palace of sultan or high Turk catching the sight occasionally. Caiques similar to your own are darting about in all directions, following, passing or meeting you, until at length you reach your destination, indicated by the crowd of caiques tied up there, like cabs on a grand-opera night waiting for their customers. Those of high Turkish functionaries or foreign ambassadors are very different from yours—as different as a coach-and-four from a common cab. Many of these have twelve rowers, all in fancy uniforms—red fezzes and jackets embroidered with gold—while the larger caiques are profusely and expensively ornamented.
Stepping ashore, you see a long line of carriages drawn up in several rows, and of every conceivable variety—from the Turkish araba to the most coquettish-looking Parisian coupé—gilded and adorned in a style to make a French lorette stare with amazement at a lavishness of expenditure exceeding her own.
The fair ones to whom these carriages belong may be seen in the distance squatting down on rugs spread out beneath the trees, and sipping coffee or sherbert while listening to musicians or story-tellers. You stroll toward them as near as their attendant guardians—grim-looking black eunuchs armed to the teeth, and quite ready to use those arms with very little provocation on the persons of any "dogs of infidels" who may interfere or seem to interfere with their fair charges—will permit. You see bundles of the gayest colored silks worn by women whose veils are thin as gossamer, and generally permit a very fair view of their charms, not only of face, but of bust as well. The bold black eyes of the caged birds flash out unshrinkingly on the strangers, who inspire curiosity, and not always aversion, if the language of those eyes be interpreted according to the Western code. In fact, the women seem to take a malicious pleasure in annoying their guards by encouraging such advances as can be made by the mute language of looks and signs.
Every Friday in the year the same pantomime is performed. The women go to the Sweet Waters to sit and stare at men whom they do not and never will know or speak to, and the men go to walk or waddle about and stare back at the women in the same way. This monotonous and melancholy pastime is varied by much stuffing of sweetmeats and cakes and sipping of colored beverages by the fair ones, and endless smoking by the men. There are strolling jugglers and musicians plying their trades for the amusement and paras of the public, and they are liberally patronized in the dreary dearth of amusement on these pleasure-grounds.
To the foreigner, after the sight has been seen a few times and divested of its novelty, the whole thing becomes tedious in the extreme; but we must remember that in his tastes the Turk is the very opposite of the Western man, and what would be death to us is fun to him. His idea of true enjoyment is that it should be passive, not active: his highest happiness is in "keff," a perfect repose of mind and body—an exaggeration of the Italian dolce far niente. This keff he enjoys at these weekly meetings, and the women in their way enjoy it too as the only public exposition of themselves they are permitted to make, and as a break in the monotony of their dreary and secluded lives.
But there is another mode of killing time there, evidently borrowed, as are the carriages, from Europe. The conveyances at intervals are driven round a circular road in two long files, going and coming, to permit people to stare at each other, just as in London, Paris or New York, minus the salutations to friends or conversation. As the poet says of the stars—