Part 29

We drove down to and through this famous cemetery in one direction and another. In its beauty I was disappointed. It is a dense and gloomy cypress forest; as a place of sepulture, without the architectural pretensions of Père-la-Chaise, and only less attractive than that. Its dark recesses are crowded with gravestones, slender at the bottom and swelling at the top, painted in lively colors,—green, red, and gray, a necessary relief to the sombre woods,—having inscriptions in gilt and red letters, and leaning at all angles, as if they had fallen out in a quarrel over night. The graves of the men are distinguished by stones crowned with turbans, or with tarbooshes painted red,—an imitation, in short, of whatever head-dress the owner wore when alive, so that perhaps his acquaintances can recognize his tomb without reading his name. Some of the more ancient have the form of a mould of Charlotte Busse. I saw more than one set jauntily on one side, which gave the monument a rakish air, singularly débonnaire for a tombstone.

In contrast to this vast assembly of the faithful is the pretty English cemetery, dedicated to the fallen in the Crimean war,—a well-kept flower-garden, which lies close to the Bosphorus on a point opposite the old Seraglio. We sat down on the sea-wall in this quiet spot, where the sun falls lovingly and the undisturbed birds sing, and looked long at the shifting, busy panorama of a world that does not disturb this repose; and then walked about the garden, noting the headstones of soldiers,—this one killed at Alma, that at Inkermann, another at Balaklava, and the tall, graceless granite monument to eight thousand nameless dead; nameless here, but not in many a home and many a heart, any more than the undistinguished thousands who sleep at Gettysburg or on a hundred other patriot fields.

Near by is the great hospital which Florence Nightingale controlled, and in her memory we asked permission to enter its wards and visit its garden. After some delay this was granted, but the Turkish official said that the hospital was for men, that there was no woman there, and as for Miss Nightingale, he had never heard of her. But we persevered and finally found an officer who led us to the room she occupied,—a large apartment now filled with the beds of the sick, and, like every other part of the establishment, neat and orderly. But our curiosity to see where the philanthropist had labored was an enigma to the Turkish officials to the last. They insisted at first that we must be relations of Miss Nightingale,—a supposition which I saw that Abd-el-Atti, who always seeks the advantage of distinction, was inclined to favor. But we said no. Well, perhaps it was natural that Englishmen should indulge in the sentiment that moved us. But we were not Englishmen, we were Americans,—they gave it up entirely. The superintendent of the hospital, a courtly and elderly bey, who had fought in the Crimean war, and whom our dragoman, dipping his hand to the ground, saluted with the most profound Egyptian obeisance, insisted upon serving us coffee in the garden by the fountain of gold-fish, and we spent an hour of quiet there.

On Sunday at about the hour that the good people in America were beginning to think what they should wear to church, we walked down to the service in the English Memorial Church, on the brow of the hill in Pera, a pointed Gothic building of a rich and pleasing interior. Only once or twice in many months had we been in a Christian church, and it was, at least, interesting to contrast its simple forms with the elaborate Greek ritual and the endless repetitions of the Moslem prayers. A choir of boys intoned or chanted a portion of the service, with marked ability, and wholly relieved the audience of the necessity of making responses. The clergymen executed the reading so successfully that we could only now and then catch a word. The service, so far as we were concerned, might as well have been in Turkish; and yet it was not altogether lost on us. We could distinguish occasionally the Lord's Prayer, and the name of Queen Victoria, and we caught some of the Commandments as they whisked past us. We knew also when we were in the Litany, from the regular cadence of the boys' responses. But as the entertainment seemed to be for the benefit of the clergymen and boys, I did not feel like intruding beyond the office of a spectator, and I soon found myself reflecting whether a machine could not be invented that should produce the same effect of sound, which was all that the congregation enjoyed.

Rome has been until recently less tolerant of the Protestant faith than Constantinople; and it was an inspiration of reciprocity to build here a church in memory of the Christian soldiers who fell in the crusade to establish the Moslem rule in European Turkey.

Of the various views about Constantinople we always pronounced that best which we saw last, and at the time we said that those from Seraglio Point, from Boolgoorloo, and from Roberts College were crowned by that from Giant's Grave Mountain, a noble height on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus near the Black Sea.

One charming morning, we ascended the strait in a steamboat that calls at the landings on the eastern shore. The Bosphorus, if you will have it in a phrase, is a river of lapis lazuli lined with marble palaces. As we saw it that morning, its sloping gardens, terraces, trees, and vines in the tender bloom of spring, all the extravagance of the Oriental poets in praise of it was justified, and it was easy to believe the nature-romance with which the earliest adventurers had clothed it. There, at Beshiktash, Jason landed to rest his weary sailors on the voyage to Colchis; and above there at Koroo Ghesmeh stood a laurel-tree which Medea planted on the return of the Argonauts. Tradition has placed near it, on the point, the site of a less attractive object, the pillar upon which Simeon Stylites spent forty years of a life which was just forty years too long; but I do not know by what authority, for I believe that the perch of the Syrian hermit was near Antioch, where his noble position edified thousands of Christians, who enjoyed their piety in contemplating his, and took their pleasures in the groves of Daphne.

Our steamer was, at this moment, a craft more dangerous to mankind than an iron-clad; it was a sort of floating harem; we sat upon the awning-covered upper deck; the greater part of the lower deck was jealously curtained off and filled with Turkish ladies. Among them we recognized a little flock of a couple of dozen, the harem of Mustapha Pasha, the uncle of the Khedive of Egypt. They left the boat at his palace in Chenguel Keuy, and we saw them, in silk gowns of white, red, blue, and yellow, streaming across the flower-garden into the marble portal,—a pretty picture. The pasha was transferring his household to the country for the summer, and we imagined that the imprisoned troop entered these blooming May gardens with the elation of freedom, which might, however, be more perfect if eunuchs did not watch every gate and foot of the garden wall. I suppose, however, that few of them would be willing to exchange their lives of idle luxury for the misery and chance of their former condition, and it is said that the maids of the so-called Christian Georgia hear with envy of the good fortune of their sisters, who have brought good prices in the Turkish capital.

When the harem disappeared we found some consolation in a tall Croat, who strutted up and down the deck in front of us, that we might sicken with envy of his splendid costume. He wore tight trousers of blue cloth, baggy in the rear but fitting the legs like a glove, and terminating over the shoes in a quilled inverted funnel; a brilliant scarf of Syrian silk in loose folds about his loins; a vest stiff with gold-em broidery; a scarlet jacket decked with gold-lace, and on his head a red fez. This is the costly dress of a Croatian gardener, who displays all his wealth to make a holiday spectacle of himself.

We sailed close to the village of Kandili and the promontory under which and upon which it lies, a site which exhausts the capacity of the loveliness of nature and the skill of art. From the villas on its height one commands, by a shifted glance, the Euxine and the Marmora, and whatever is most lovely in the prospect of two continents; the purity of the air is said to equal the charm of the view. Above this promontory opens the valley down which flows the river Geuksoo (sky-water), and at the north of it stands a white marble kiosk of the Sultan, the most beautiful architectural creation on the strait. Near it, shaded by great trees, is a handsome fountain; beyond the green turf in the tree-decked vale which pierces the hill were groups of holiday-makers in gay attire. I do not know if this Valley of the Heavenly Water is the loveliest in the East, but it is said that its charms of meadow, shade, sweet water, and scented flowers are a substantial foretaste of the paradise of the true believer. But it is in vain to catalogue the charming villages, the fresh beauties of nature and art to which each revolution of the paddle-wheel carried us. We thought we should be content with a summer residence of the Khedive, on the European side below the lovely bay of Terapea, with its vast hillside of gardens and orchards and the long line of palaces on the water. Fanned by the invigorating breezes from the Black Sea, its summer climate must be perfect.

We landed at Beicos, and, in default of any conveyance, walked up through the straggling village, along the shore, to a verdant, shady meadow, sweet with clover and wild-flowers. This is in the valley of Hun-Kiar Iskelesi, a favorite residence of the sultans; here on a projecting rocky point is a reddish palace built and given to the Sultan by the Khedive. The meadow, in which we were, is behind a palace of old Mohammed Ali, and it is now used as a pasture for the Sultan's horses, dozens of which were tethered and feeding in the lush grass and clover. The tents of their attendants were pitched on the plain, and groups of Turkish ladies were picnicking under the large sycamores. It was a charming rural scene. I made the silent acquaintance of an old man, in a white turban and flowing robes, who sat in the grass knitting and watching his one white lamb feed; probably knitting the fleece of his lamb of the year before.

We were in search of an araba and team to take us up the mountain; one stood in the meadow which we could hire, but oxen were wanting, and we despatched a Greek boy in search of the animals. The Turkish ladies of fashion delight in the araba when they ride into the country, greatly preferring it to the horse or donkey, or to any other carriage. It is a long cart of four wheels, without springs, but it is as stately in appearance as the band-wagon of a circus; its sloping side-boards and even the platform in front are elaborately carved and gilded. While we waited the motions of the boy, who joined to himself two others even more prone to go astray than himself, an officer of the royal stables invited us to take seats under the shade of his tent and served us with coffee. After an hour the boy returned with two lean steers. The rude, hooped top of the araba was spread with a purple cloth, a thick bedquilt covered the bottom, and by the aid of a ladder we climbed into the ark and sat or lay as we could best stow ourselves. A boy led the steers by a rope, another walked at the side gently goading them with a stick, and we rumbled along slowly through the brilliant meadows. It became evident after a time that we were not ascending the mountain, but going into the heart of the country; the cart was stopped and the wild driver was interrogated. I never saw a human being so totally devoid of a conscience. We had hired him to take us up to Giant's Grave Mountain. He was deliberately cheating us out of it. At first he insisted that he was going in the right direction, but upon the application of the dragoman's fingers to his ear, he pleaded that the mountain road was bad and that it was just as well for us to visit the Sultan's farm up the valley. We had come seven thousand miles to see the view from the mountain, but this boy had not the least scruple in depriving us of it. We turned about and entered a charming glen, thoroughly New England in its character, set with small trees and shrubs and carpeted with a turf of short sweet grass. One needs to be some months in the Orient to appreciate the delight experienced by the sight of genuine turf.

As we ascended, the road, gullied by the spring torrents, at last became impassable for wheels, and we were obliged to abandon the araba and perform the last half-mile of the journey on foot. The sightly summit of the mountain is nearly six hundred feet above the water. There, in a lovely grove, we found a coffeehouse and a mosque and the Giant's Grave, which the Moslems call the grave of Joshua. It is a flower-planted enclosure, seventy feet long and seven wide, ample for any hero; the railing about it is tagged with bits of cloth which pious devotees have tied there in the expectation that their diseases, perhaps their sins, will vanish with the airing of these shreds. From the minaret is a wonderful view,—the entire length of the Bosphorus, with all its windings and lovely bays enlivened with white sails, ships at anchor, and darting steamers, rich in villages, ancient castles, and forts; a great portion of Asia Minor, with the snow peaks of Olympus; on the south, the Islands of the Blest and the Sea of Marmora; on the north, the Cyanean rocks and the wide sweep of the Euxine, blue as heaven and dotted with a hundred white sails, overlooked by the ruin of a Genoese castle, at the entrance of the Bosphorus, built on the site of a temple of Jupiter, and the spot where the Argonauts halted before they ventured among the Symplegades; and immediately below, Terapea and the deep bay of Buyukdereh, the summer resort of the foreign residents of Constantinople, a paradise of palaces and gardens, of vales and stately plane-trees, and the entrance to the interior village of Belgrade, with its sacred forest unprofaned as yet by the axe.

The Cyanean rocks which Jason and his mariners regarded as floating islands, or sentient monsters, vanishing and reappearing, are harmlessly anchored now, and do not appear at all formidable, though they disappear now as of old when the fierce Euxine rolls in its storm waves. Por a long time and with insatiable curiosity we followed with the eye the line of the coast of the Pontus Euxinus, once as thickly set with towns as the Riviera of Italy,—cities of Ionian, Dorian, and Athenian colonies, who followed the Phoenicians and perhaps the Egyptians,—in the vain hope of extending our vision to Trebizond, to the sea fortress of Petra, renowned for its defence by the soldiers of Chosroes against the arms of Justinian, and, further, to the banks of the Pliasis, to Colchis, whose fabulous wealth tempted Jason and his sea-robbers. The waters of this land were so impregnated with particles of gold that fleeces of sheep were used to strain out the yellow metal. Its palaces shone with gold and silver, and you might expect in its gardens the fruit of the Hesperides. In the vales of the Caucasus, we are taught, our race has attained its most perfect form; in other days its men were as renowned for strength and valor as its women were for beauty,—the one could not be permanently subdued, the others conquered, even in their slavery. Early converts to the Christian faith, they never adopted its morals nor comprehended its metaphysics; and perhaps a more dissolute and venal society does not exist than that whose business for centuries has been the raising of maids for the Turkish harems. And the miserable, though willing, victims are said to possess not even beauty, until after a training in luxury by the slave-dealers.

We made our way, not without difficulty, down the rough, bush-grown hillside, invaded a new Turkish fortification, and at length found a place where we could descend the precipitous bank and summon a boat to ferry us across to Buyukdereh. This was not easy to obtain; but finally an aged Greek boatman appeared with a caique as aged and decayed as himself. The chances seemed to be that it could make the voyage, and we all packed ourselves into it, sitting on the bottom and filling it completely. There was little margin of boat above the water, and any sudden motion would have reduced that to nothing. We looked wise and sat still, while the old Greek pulled feebly and praised the excellence of his craft. On the opposite slope our attention was called to a pretty cottage, and a Constantinople lady, who was of the party, began to tell us the story of its occupant. So dramatic and exciting did it become that we forgot entirely the peril of our frail and overloaded boat. The story finished as we drew up to the landing, which we instantly comprehended we had not reached a moment too soon. Eor when we arose our clothes were soaked; we were sitting in water, which was rapidly filling the boat, and would have swamped it in five minutes. The landing-place of Buyukdereh, the bay, the hills and villas, reminded us of Lake Como, and the quay and streets were rather Italian than Oriental. The most soaked of the voyagers stood outside the railing of the pretty garden of the café to dry in the sun, while the others sat inside, under the vines, and passed out to the unfortunates, through the iron bars, tiny cups of coffee, and fed them with rahat-al-lacoom and other delicious sweetmeats, until the arrival of the steamer. The ride down was lovely; the sun made the barracks and palaces on the east shore a blaze of diamonds; and the minarets seen through the steamer's smoke which, transfused with the rosy light, overhung the city, had a phantasmagorical aspect.

Constantinople shares with many other cities the reputation of being the most dissolute in the world. The traveller is not required to decide the rival claims of this sort of pre-eminence, which are eagerly put forward; he may better, in each city, acquiesce in the complaisant assumption of the inhabitants. But when he is required to see in the moral state of the Eastern capital signs of its speedy decay, and the near extinction of the Othman rule, he takes a leaf out of history and reflects. It is true, no doubt, that the Turks are enfeebled by luxury and sensuality, and have, to a great extent, lost those virile qualities which gave to their ancestors the dominion of so many kingdoms in Asia, Africa, and Europe; in short, that the race is sinking into an incapacity to propagate itself in the world. If one believes what he hears, the morals of society could not be worse. The women, so many of whom have been bought in the market, or are daughters of slaves, are educated only for pleasure; and a great proportion of the male population are adventurers from all lands, with few domestic ties. The very relaxation of the surveillance of the harem (the necessary prelude to the emancipation of woman) opens the door to opportunity, and gives freer play to feminine intrigue. One hears, indeed, that even the inmates of the royal harem find means of clandestine intercourse with the foreigners of Pera. The history of the Northern and Western occupation of the East has been, for fifteen centuries, only a repetition of yielding to the seductive influences of a luxurious climate and to soft and pleasing invitation.

But, heighten as we may the true and immoral picture of social life in Constantinople, I doubt if it is so loose and unrestrained as it was for centuries under the Greek Emperors; I doubt if the imbecility, the luxurious effeminacy of the Turks has sunk to the level of the Byzantine Empire; and when we are asked to expect in the decay of to-day a speedy dissolution, we remember that for a period of over a thousand years, from the partition of the Roman Empire between the two sons of Theodosius to the capture of Constantinople by Mohammed II., the empire subsisted in a state of premature and perpetual decay. These Oriental dynasties are a long time in dying, and we cannot measure their decrepitude by the standards of Occidental morality.

The trade and the commerce of the city are largely in the hands of foreigners; but it has nearly always been so, since the days of the merchants and manufacturers of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice. We might draw an inference of Turkish insecurity from the implacable hatred of the so-called Greek subjects, if the latter were not in the discord of a thousand years of anarchy and servitude. The history of the islands of the Eastern Mediterranean has been a succession of Turkish avarice and rapacity, horrible Greek revenge and Turkish wholesale devastation and massacre, repeated over and over again; but there appears as yet no power able either to expel the Turks or unite the Greeks. That the leaven of change is working in the Levant is evident to the most superficial observation, and one sees everywhere the introduction of Western civilization, of business habits, and, above all, of schools. However indifferent the Osmanlis are to education, they are not insensible to European opinion; and in reckoning up their bad qualities, we ought not to forget that they have set some portions of Christendom a lesson of religious toleration,—both in Constantinople and Jerusalem the Christians were allowed a freedom of worship in their own churches which was not permitted to Protestants within the sacred walls of Pontifical Rome.

One who would paint the manners or the morals of Constantinople might adorn his theme with many anecdotes, characteristic of a condition of society which is foreign to our experience. I select one which has the merit of being literally true. You who believe that modern romance exists only in tales of fiction, listen to the story of a beauty of Constantinople, the vicissitudes of whose life equal in variety if not in importance those of Theodora and Athenais. For obvious reasons, I shall mention no names.

There lives now on the banks of the Bosphorus an English physician, who, at the entreaty of Lord Byron, went to Greece in 1824 as a volunteer surgeon in the war of independence; he arrived only in time to see the poet expire at Missolonghi. In the course of the war, he was taken prisoner by the Egyptian troops, who in their great need of surgeons kept him actively employed in his profession. He did not regain his freedom until after the war, and then only on condition that he should reside in Constantinople as one of the physicians of the Sultan, Mohammed II.