Constantinople opened to Forrest a fascinating glimpse of the civilization of the East, with its ancient races of men, its strange architecture and religious rites, its poetic costumes, its impressive manners, and that glamour of mystery over all which makes Oriental life seem to the Western traveller such a contrast to everything he has been wonted to at home. He made the most of his time here in visiting the historic monuments and trying to penetrate the open secrets of Moslem habits and Turkish character; and he brought away with him, on his departure for Greece, a crowd of mental pictures which never lost their clearness or their interest. For the history of the city of Constantine has been most rich in romance; and the scene unveiled to the voyager who approaches it by daylight or by moonlight is a vision of enchantment,—a wilderness of mosques, domes, cupolas, solemn cypresses, and spouting fountains. On a beautiful day, when not a cloud was in the sky nor a ripple on the Bosphorus, Forrest was surveying the city and its environs from a boat in the midst of the bay, when he saw, slowly approaching, a sumptuous barge, with awnings of silk and gold, a banner with the crescent and inscriptions in Arabic floating above, and a group of turbaned guards, with scimitars in their hands, half surrounding a man reclined on a purple divan. "Who is that?" asked Forrest of the guide. "That is the Padishah," was the reply. Forrest, ignorant of this title of "the Shah of Shahs" for the Sultan of Turkey, understood the guide to say, Paddy Shaw! and, supposing it to be some rich Irishman who was cutting such a figure in the Golden Horn, was so struck by the absurdity that he laughed aloud. The measured strokes of the rowers, regular as a piece of solemn music, meanwhile had brought the imperial freight nearly alongside. The guards looked at the laughing tragedian as if they would have liked to chop his head off, or bowstring him and sink him in a sack. The Sultan looked slowly at the audacious American, without the slightest change of expression in his sad, dark, impassive face,—and the two striking figures, so unlike, were soon out of sight of each other forever!
Passing over the notes of his tour in Greece, as covering matters now hackneyed from the descriptions given by hundreds of more recent travellers and published in every kind of literary form, a single extract from a letter to his mother is perhaps worthy of citation:
"From Constantinople I went to Smyrna, and thence into Greece. Here I am now, at last, in the city of Athens, the glorious home not only of the Drama, but also of so much else that has passed into the life of mankind. Alas, how changed! With all the power of imagination which I can conjure up, I am hardly able to convince myself that this was the once proud city of Pericles, Plato, Æschylus, Demosthenes, and the other men whose names have sounded so grand in the mouths of posterity. Looking on the tumbled temples and desolate walls, I have exclaimed with Byron,—
'Ancient of days! august Athena, where,
Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
Gone,—glimmering through the dream of things that were.
First in the race that led to Glory's goal,—
They're sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower,
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.'"
A personal adventure, also, that befell him at Athens, must not be omitted. One beautiful afternoon, he had been inspecting the Parthenon and what remained of its sculptured ornaments. Near where he stood, a heap of skulls lay on the ground, skulls of some of the victims of the last revolution, who had fallen in a battle of the Greeks and Turks. His attention was drawn to the phrenological developments of several of these skulls. Chancing at that moment to look down towards the temple of Theseus, he saw, only a short distance from him, a man glide from behind a column and walk away. The man was clad in the costume of an Albanian, one of the most picturesque costumes in the world, and looked as if he had freshly stepped out of a painting,—so beautiful was the combination of symmetry in his form, grace in his motion, and beauty in his dress. Perfectly fascinated, Forrest hastened forward and addressed the stranger in English, in French, in Spanish; but vain was every attempt to make himself understood. Just then Hill, the American missionary for many years at Athens, came along. Forrest accosted him with the inquiry, "Do you know who that man is yonder?" and, as much to his amazement as to his delight, received the answer, "Why, do you not know him? That is the son of Marco Bozzaris!" The lines of his friend Halleck,—