Part 2
Every one turned toward the Asiatic shore. Skutari, the Golden City, barely visible to the naked eye, lay scattered over the summits and sides of her great hills, the morning mist throwing a delicate veil over her radiant beauty, smiling and fresh as though just called into being by the touch of a fairy wand. Who can give any idea of that sight? The language we employ to describe our own cities is altogether inadequate to depict that extraordinary variety of color and form, that marvellous mixture of town and country, at once gay and austere, Oriental and Western, fantastic, graceful, imposing. Imagine a city composed of thousands of crimson and yellow villas, thousands of gardens overflowing with verdure, a hundred snow-white mosques rising in their midst; above it a forest of enormous cypresses, indicating the site of the largest cemetery of the East; on the outer edge huge white barracks, groups of houses and cypresses, villages built on the brows of little hills; beyond them others, again, half hidden in foliage, and over all, the peaks of minarets and summits of domes, sparkling points of light, halfway up the side of a mountain which closes in the horizon as it were with a curtain. A great metropolis scattered throughout an enormous garden and overhanging a shore here broken by steep precipices, there shelving gently down in green gradations to charming little inlets filled with shade and bloom; and below, the blue mirror of the Bosphorus reflecting all this splendor and beauty.
As I stood gazing at Skutari my friend touched me on the elbow to announce the discovery of still another city, and, sure enough, turning toward the Sea of Marmora, there, on the same Asiatic shore and a little beyond Skutari, lay a long string of houses, mosques, and gardens which we had but lately passed in front of, but which, up to this moment, had been entirely hidden by the fog. With the help of the glass it was now easy to distinguish cafés, bazârs, European-looking houses, flights of stairs, the walls of the market-gardens, and boats scattered along the shore. This was Kadi Keui (Village of the Judge), erected on the ruins of ancient Chalcedon, the former rival of Byzantium--that Chalcedon founded six hundred and eighty-four years before Christ by the Megarians, to whom the Delphic Oracle gave the surname of The Blind for having selected that rather than the opposite site, where Stambul is now situated.
“That makes three cities,” said the captain, checking them off on his fingers as each moment brought a fresh one into view.
The ship was still lying stationary between Skutari and the Seraglio hill, the fog completely concealing everything on the Bosphorus beyond Skutari, as well as Galata and Pera, which lay directly before us. Boats began to pass close by--barges, steam-launches, sailboats--but no one paid any attention to them. Every eye was glued to that gray curtain which hung over the Frankish city. I trembled with impatience and anticipation. Yet a few moments and there would be unfolded before my eyes that marvellous spectacle which none has here been able to behold unmoved. My hands shook so violently that it was with difficulty I could hold the glass to my eyes. The captain, worthy man, watched my excitement with keen delight, and, presently clapping his hands together, cried, “There it is! there it is!”
And, true enough, there did at last begin to appear through the mist first little specks of white, then the vague outlines of a lofty eminence, then scattered beams of light where some window caught and reflected the sun’s rays, and finally Galata and Pera stood revealed before us--a mountain, a myriad of houses, of all colors, heaped one above another, a lofty city crowned with minarets, domes, and cypress trees, and towering over all the monumental palaces of the foreign ambassadors and the great tower of Galata; beneath, the vast arsenal of Top-Khâneh and a forest of shipping; and still, as the fog lifted, more and more of the city came into view stretching along the banks of the Bosphorus; and in bewildering succession there leaped into sight streets and suburbs extending from the hilltops to the water’s edge, closely built, interminable, marked here and there with the sparkling white tips of the mosques--line upon line of buildings, little bays, palaces built upon the shore, pavilions, kiosks, gardens, groves; and, dimly outlined through the distant haze, other suburbs still, their roofs alone distinguishable, all gilded by the sun’s rays--a luxuriance of color, a profusion of verdure, a succession of vistas, a grandeur, a grace, a glory sufficient to make any one break forth into transports of incoherent delight. Every one on board, however, stood speechless, staring, with mouth and eyes wide open--passengers, seamen, Turks, Europeans, children. Not a whisper was heard. No one knew in which direction to look. On one side lay Skutari and Kadi Keui; on the other, the Seraglio hill; opposite, Galata, Pera, and the Bosphorus. To see it all one had to keep revolving around in a circle like a teetotum, and revolve we did, devouring with our eyes first this and then that, gesticulating, laughing, but speechless with admiration. Heavens above! what moments in a man’s life!
But yet the most beautiful and imposing sight of all was to come. We were still lying stationary off Seraglio Point, and until this has been rounded you cannot see the Golden Horn or get the most wonderful of all the views of Constantinople.
“Now, gentlemen and ladies, pay attention!” cried the captain before giving the order to proceed. “This is the _critical moment_; in three minutes we shall be opposite Constantinople.”
I felt myself grow hot and cold. For a moment all was still. How my heart beat! How feverishly I waited for that blessed word, “Forward!”
“Forward!” shouted the captain. The ship began to move.
On we go! Kings, princes, potentates, ye great ones of the earth! at that moment I felt nothing but compassion for you. All your wealth and power seemed but little in comparison with my place on that boat, and an empire a poor thing to offer in exchange for one look.
A minute passes, then another. We are gliding by Seraglio Point, and see opening before us an enormous space flooded with light and a huge mass of many shapes and colors. The point is passed, and behold! before us lies Constantinople--Constantinople, boundless, superb, sublime! The glory of creation and mankind! A triumph of beauty, far surpassing one’s wildest dreams!
And now; poor wretch, attempt to describe it. Profane with your commonplace words that divine vision. Who indeed can describe Constantinople? Chateaubriand? Lamartine? Gautier? What things you have all stammered and stuttered about it! and yet no one can resist trying. Words, phrases, comparisons crowd through the brain and drop off the end of one’s pen. I gaze, talk, write, all at the same time, hopeless of success, and yet compelled to the attempt by some overmastering influence.
Let us see, then. The Golden Horn lies directly opposite us like a wide river; on each bank there extends a ridge; upon them stretch two parallel lines of the city, embracing eight miles of hill and valley, bay and promontory, a hundred amphitheatres of buildings and gardens, an enormous space dotted over with houses, mosques, bazârs, seraglios, baths, kiosks, of an infinite variety of color and form, and from their midst the sparkling points of thousands of minarets reaching heavenward like great pillars of ivory; then groves of cypresses descending in dark ranks from the hilltops to the water’s edge, fringing the outskirts, outlining the inlets; and through all a wealth of vegetation, crowning the heights, pushing up between the roofs, overhanging the water, flinging itself up in radiant luxuriance wherever it can obtain a foothold. To the right, Galata, her foreground a forest of masts and flags; above Galata, Pera, the imposing shapes of her European palaces outlined against the sky; in front, the bridge connecting the two banks, across which flow continually two opposite, many-hued streams of life; to the left, Stambul, scattered over her seven hills, each crowned with a gigantic mosque with its leaden dome and gilded pinnacle: St. Sophia, white and rose-tinted; Sultan Ahmed, flanked by six minarets; Suleiman the Great, crowned by ten domes; the Validêh Sultan, reflected in the waves; on the fourth hill the mosque of Muhammad II.; on the fifth, that of Selim; on the sixth, the seraglio of Tekyr; and, high above everything else, the white tower of the Seraskerat, which commands the shores of two continents from the Dardanelles to the Black Sea. Beyond the sixth hill of Stambul on the one hand, and Galata on the other, nothing can be distinguished save a few vague outlines of buildings, faint indications of towns and villages, broken up by bays and inlets, fleets of little vessels, and groups of trees hardly visible through the blue haze, and which appear more like atmospheric illusions than actual objects.
How can one possibly take in all the details of this marvellous scene? For a moment the eye rests upon a Turkish house or gilded minaret close by, but, immediately abandoning it, roams off once more at will into that boundless space of light and color, or scales the heights of those two opposite shores with their range upon range of stately buildings, groves, and gardens, like the terraces of some enchanted city, while the brain, bewildered, exhausted, overpowered, can with difficulty follow in its wake.
An inexpressible majestic serenity is diffused throughout this wonderful spectacle, an indefinable sense of loveliness and youth which recalls a thousand forgotten tales and dreams of boyhood--something aërial, mysterious, overpowering, transporting the imagination and senses far beyond the bounds of the actual.
The sky, in which are blended together the most delicate shades of blue and silver, throws everything into marvellous relief, while the water, of a sapphire blue and dotted over with little purple buoys, reflects the minarets in long trembling lines of white; the cupolas glisten in the sunlight; all that mass of vegetation sways and palpitates in the morning air; clouds of pigeons circle about the mosques; thousands of gayly-painted and gilded pleasure-boats flash over the surface of the water; the zephyrs from the Black Sea come laden with the perfumes of a thousand flower-gardens; and when at length, intoxicated by the sights and sounds and smells of this paradise, and forgetful of all else, one turns away, it is only to behold with fresh sensations of wonder and amazement the shores of Asia, with their imposing panorama of beauty; Skutari and the nebulous heights of the Bithynian Olympus; the Sea of Marmora dotted over with little islands and white with sails; and the Bosphorus, covered with shipping, winding away between two interminable lines of kiosks, palaces, and villas, to disappear at last mysteriously amid the most smiling and radiant hillsides of the Orient. To deny that this is the most beautiful sight on earth would be churlish indeed, as ungrateful toward God as it would be unjust to his creation; and it is certain that anything more beautiful would surpass mankind’s powers of enjoyment.
On recovering somewhat from my own first overwhelming sensations I turned to see how the other passengers had been impressed. Every countenance was transfixed. The eyes of the two Athenian ladies were suspiciously moist; the Russian mother had, in that supreme moment, clasped her little Olga to her breast; even the voice of the icy English priest was now heard for the first time, murmuring to himself, “Wonderful! wonderful!”
The vessel having in the mean time dropped anchor not far below the bridge, we were quickly surrounded by small boats from the shore, which a moment later discharged a rabble of Greek, Armenian, and Hebrew porters upon our decks, and these, while anathematizing the aliens from the other world, at the same time took possession of our property and our persons. After making some feeble show of resistance, I shook hands with the captain, gave a kiss to little Olga, and, bidding our fellow-passengers farewell, went over the side with my friend, where a four-oared barge rapidly transported us to the custom-house. Thence, after threading a labyrinth of tortuous streets, we finally reached our quarters in the Hotel de Byzance on the summit of the hill of Pera.
FIVE HOURS LATER.
The visions of the morning have disappeared, and Constantinople, that dream of light and beauty, turns out to be a huge city, cut up into a succession of hills and valleys, a labyrinth of human anthills, cemeteries, ruins, and desert-places--a mixture without parallel of civilization and barbarism, reflecting something of every city in the world, gathering within its borders every aspect of human life. That comparatively small part enclosed within the walls forms, as it were, the skeleton of a mighty city; as for the rest, it is a vast aggregation of barracks, an enormous Asiatic encampment, in which swarms a population of every race and religion under the sun. It is a great city in a state of transformation, composed of ancient towns falling into decay, of new ones built but yesterday, and of still others in process of erection. Everything is topsy-turvy; on all sides are seen the traces of some gigantic undertaking--mountains tunnelled through, hills levelled, suburbs razed to the ground, great thoroughfares laid out, heaps of stone, and the traces of disastrous fires, portions of the earth’s surface for ever undergoing some alteration at the hand of man. The disorder and confusion and the never-ending succession of strange and unexpected sights make one dizzy.
Walk down a stately street, and you find it ends in a precipice; come out of a theatre, and you are surrounded by tombs; climb to the summit of a hill, beneath your feet you discover a forest, while a new city confronts you from some neighboring hilltop; the street you have this moment left suddenly winds away from you through a deep valley half hidden by trees; walk around a house, you discover a bay; descend a lane, farewell to the city: you find yourself in a lonely defile, with nothing to be seen but the sky above you; towns appear and disappear continually. They start into view over your head, beneath your feet, over your shoulder, far off, near by, in sun and shadow, on the tops of mountains and on the shore below. Take a step forward, an immense panorama is spread out before you; backward, and you see nothing at all; lift your head, and the points of a thousand minarets flash before your eyes; turn it, and not one is in sight. The network of streets winds in and out among the hills, overtopping terraces, grazing the edges of precipices, passing beneath aqueducts, to break up suddenly in footpaths leading down some grassy incline to the water’s edge, or else, skirting piles of ruins, meanders away among rocks and sand to the open country. Here and there the huge metropolis stops, as it were, to take breath in the solitude of the country, then recommences, more crowded, gay, noisy, bewildering, than before; here it spreads out flat and monotonous, there scales the hillside, disappears over the summit, disperses; then once more gathers itself together. In one section it ferments with life, noise, movement; in another there is the stillness of death; one quarter is all red, another white, a third shines with gilding, a fourth looks like a mountain of flowers: stately city, village, country, garden, harbor, wilderness, market, cemetery, in endless succession, rear themselves, one above another, in such a manner that certain heights command in a single view all the aspects of life which are usually found embraced in an entire province. In every direction a series of strange and unfamiliar shapes is outlined against the sea and sky, so close together and so indented and broken up by the extraordinary variety of architectural forms that the eye becomes confused and the various objects seem to melt one into another.
In among the Turkish dwelling-houses European palaces rise suddenly up, spires overtop the minarets, and cupolas crown the garden-terraces, with battlemented walls behind them; roofs of Chinese kiosks appear above the façade of a theatre; barred and grated harems face rows of glazed windows; side by side with open balconies and terraces are found Moorish buildings with recessed windows and small forbidding doorways. Shrines to the Madonna are set up beneath Arabian archways; tombs stand in the courtyards; towers arise amid the hovels; mosques, synagogues, Greek, Catholic, Armenian churches, crowd one upon the other, as though each were striving for the mastery, and, from every spot unoccupied by buildings, cypress and pine, fig and plane trees stretch forth their branches and tower above the surrounding roofs.
An indescribable architecture of expedients, following the infinite caprices of the soil, portions of buildings cut up into sections, triangular, upright, prone, surrounded and connected by bridges, props, and defiles, heaped up in confused masses, like huge fragments detached from a mountain-side.
At every hundred steps the scene changes. Now you are in a suburb of Marseilles; turn, and it becomes an Asiatic village; another turn, and it is a Greek settlement; still another, a suburb of Trebizond. The language and dress, the faces you meet, the look of the houses in the various quarters, all suggest a different country from the one you have just left; they are bits of France, slices of Italy, samples of England, scraps of Russia. One sees depicted in vivid colors on the great surface of the city that battle which is here being waged between the various groups of Christians on the one hand fighting to repossess themselves of, and Islamism on the other defending with all its remaining strength, the sacred soil of Constantinople. Stambul, once entirely Turkish, is assailed on all sides by settlements of Christians, before whose advance it is slowly giving way all along the banks of the Golden Horn and the shores of the Sea of Marmora; in other directions the conquest is proceeding much more rapidly: churches, hospitals, palaces, public gardens, schools, and factories are rending asunder the Mussulman’s quarters, encroaching upon his cemeteries, and advancing from one height to another, until already, on the dismayed soil, there are sketched the vague outlines of another European city, as large as the one now covering the banks of the Golden Horn, and destined one day to embrace the European shore of the Bosphorus.
But from such general observations as these the attention is distracted at every step by some fresh object of interest: on one street it is the monastery of the dervishes, in another a great Moorish building, a Turkish café, a bazâr, a fountain, an aqueduct. In the course of a quarter of an hour, too, one is obliged to alter his gait at least a dozen times. You must descend, mount, climb down some steep incline or up by stairs cut out of the rock, wade through the mud and surmount a thousand different obstacles, threading your way now through crowds of people, then in and out among shrubbery; here stooping to avoid lines of clothes hung out to dry; at one moment obliged to hold your breath, at the next inhaling a hundred delicious odors. From a terrace flooded with light and commanding a magnificent view of the Bosphorus, Asia, and the blue arch of heaven one step will bring you to a network of narrow alley-ways, leading in and out among wretched, half-ruined houses and choked up with heaps of stone and rubbish; from some delicious retreat filled with verdure and bloom you emerge on a dry, dusty waste littered with débris; from a thoroughfare glowing with life, movement, and color you step into some sepulchral recess, where it seems as though the silence had never been broken by the sound of a human voice; from the glorious Orient of one’s dreams to quite another Orient, forbidding, oppressive, falling into decay, and suggestive of all that is mournful and depressing. After walking about for a few hours amid this medley of strange sights, one’s brain becomes completely confused. Were any one to suddenly put the question to you, “What sort of a place is Constantinople?” you would only stare at him vacantly, quite incapable of giving any intelligible reply. Constantinople is a Babylon, a world, a chaos.--Is it beautiful?--Marvellously.--Ugly?--Horribly so.--Do you like it?--It fascinates me.--Shall you remain?--How on earth can I tell? Can any one tell how long he is likely to stay on another planet?
You return at last to your lodgings, enthusiastic, disappointed, enchanted, disgusted, stunned, stupefied, your head whirling around like that of a person in the first stages of brain fever. This condition gradually gives way to one of complete prostration, utter exhaustion of mind and body; you have lived years in the course of a few hours, and feel yourself aged.
And the population of this huge city?
THE BRIDGE.
The best place from which to see the population of Constantinople is the floating bridge, about a quarter of a mile long, which connects the extreme point of Galata with the opposite shore of the Golden Horn, just below the mosque of the Validêh Sultan. Both banks are European territory, but, notwithstanding this fact, the bridge may be said to connect Europe and Asia, since nothing in Stambul but the ground itself is European, and even those quarters occupied by Christians have taken on an Asiatic character. The Golden Horn, though in appearance a river, in reality separates two different worlds, like an ocean. European news reaches Galata and Pera, and at once it is in every one’s mouth, and circulates rapidly, fresh, minute, and accurate, while in Stambul it is heard only like some vague, far-away echo; the fame of worldwide reputations and the most startling events roll back from before that little strip of water as from some insuperable barrier, and across that bridge, daily traversed by a hundred thousand feet, an idea does not pass once in ten years.
Standing there, you can see all Constantinople pass by in the course of an hour. Two human currents flow incessantly back and forth from dawn to sunset, affording a spectacle which the market-places of India, the Pekin fetes, or the fairs of Nijnii-Novgorod can certainly give but a faint conception of. In order to get anything like a clear idea you must fix your attention on some particular point and look nowhere else. The instant you allow your eyes to wander everything becomes confused and you lose your head. The crowd surges by in great waves of color, each group of persons representing a different nationality. Try to imagine the most extravagant contrasts of costume, every variety of type and social class, and your wildest dreams will fall short of the reality; in the course of ten minutes and in the space of a few feet you will have seen a mixture of race and dress you never conceived of before.