CHAPTER VIII.

A Noble Grecian Lady.--Beauty of Scio.--An Original.--Foggi.--A Turkish Coffee-house.--Mussulman at Prayers.--Easter Sunday.--A Greek Priest.--A Tartar Guide.--Turkish Ladies.--Camel Scenes.--Sight of a Harem.--Disappointed Hopes.--A rare Concert.--Arrival at Smyrna.

(_Continuation of the Letter._)

WE returned to the house, and seeking out a room less ruined than the rest, partook of a slight collation, and set out on a visit to a relative of my Sciote friend.

On our way my companion pointed out a convent on the side of a hill, where six thousand Greeks, who had been prevailed upon to come down from the mountains to ransom themselves, were treacherously murdered to a man; their unburied bones still whiten the ground within the walls of the convent. Arriving at the house of his relative, we entered through a large gateway into a handsome courtyard, with reservoir, garden, &c., ruinous, though in better condition than those we had seen before. This relative was a widow, of the noble house of Mavrocordato, one of the first families in Greece, and perhaps the most distinguished name in the Greek revolution. She had availed herself of the sultan's amnesty to return; had repaired two or three rooms, and sat down to end her days among the scenes of her childhood, among the ruins of her father's house. She was now not more than thirty; her countenance was remarkably pensive, and she had seen enough to drive a smile for ever from her face. The meeting between her and my friend was exceedingly affecting, particularly on her part. She wept bitterly, though, with the elasticity peculiar to the Greek character, the smile soon chased away the tear. She invited us to spend the night there, pointing to the divan, and promising us cushions and coverlets. We accepted her invitation, and again set forth to ramble among the ruins.

I had heard that an American missionary had lately come into the island, and was living somewhere in the neighbourhood. I found out his abode, and went to see him. He was a young man from Virginia, by the name of ****; had married a lady from Connecticut, who was unfortunately sick in bed. He was living in one room in the corner of a ruined building, but was then engaged in repairing a house into which he expected to remove soon. As an American, the first whom they had seen in that distant island, they invited me into the sickroom. In a strange land, and among a people whose language they did not understand, they seemed to be all in all to each other; and I left them, probably for ever, in the earnest hope that the wife might soon be restored to health, that hand in hand they might sustain each other in the rough path before them.

Toward evening we returned to the house of my friend's relative. We found there a nephew, a young man about twenty-two, and a cousin, a man about thirty-five, both accidentally on a visit to the island. As I looked at the little party before me, sitting around a brazier of charcoal, and talking earnestly in Greek, I could hardly persuade myself that what I had seen and heard that day was real. All that I had ever read in history of the ferocity of the Turkish character; all the wild stories of corsairs, of murdering, capturing, and carrying into captivity, that I had ever read in romances, crowded upon me, and I saw living witnesses that the bloodiest records of history and the wildest creations of romance were not overcharged. They could all testify in their own persons that these things were true. They had all been stripped of their property, and had their houses burned over their heads; had all narrowly escaped being murdered; and had all suffered in their nearest and dearest connexions. The nephew, then a boy nine years old, had been saved by a maidservant, his father had been murdered; a brother, a sister, and many of his cousins, were at that moment, and had been for years, in slavery among the Turks; my friend, with his sister, had found refuge in the house of the Austrian consul, and from thence had escaped into Italy; the cousin was the son of one of the forty hostages who were hung, and was the only member of his father's family that escaped death; while our pensive and amiable hostess, a bride of seventeen, had seen her young husband murdered before her eyes; had herself been sold into slavery, and, after two years' servitude, redeemed by her friends.

In the morning I rose early and walked out upon the terrace. Nature had put on a different garb. The wind had fallen, and the sun was shining warmly upon a scene of softness and luxuriance surpassing all that I had ever heard or dreamed of the beauty of the islands of Greece. Away with all that I said about Syra; skip the page. The terrace overlooked the garden filled with orange, lemon, almond, and fig trees; with plants, roses, and flowers of every description, growing in luxuriant wildness. But the view was not confined to the garden. Looking back to the harbour of Scio, was a bold range of rugged mountains bounding the view on that side; on the right was the sea, then calm as a lake; on both the other sides were ranges of mountains, irregular and picturesque in their appearance, verdant and blooming to their very summits; and within these limits, for an extent of perhaps five miles, were continued gardens like that at my feet, filled with the choicest fruit-trees, with roses and the greatest variety of rare plants and flowers that ever unfolded their beauties before the eyes of man; above all, the orange-trees, the peculiar favourite of the island, then almost in full bloom, covered with blossoms, from my elevated position on the terrace made the whole valley appear an immense bed of flowers. All, too, felt the freshening influence of the rain; and a gentle breeze brought to me from this wilderness of sweets the most delicious perfume that ever greeted the senses. Do not think me extravagant when I say that, in your wildest dreams, you could never fancy so rich and beautiful a scene. Even among ruins, that almost made the heart break, I could hardly tear my eyes from it. It is one of the loveliest spots on earth. It is emphatically a Paradise lost, for the hand of the Turks is upon it; a hand that withers all that it touches. In vain does the sultan invite the survivers, and the children made orphans by his bloody massacre, to return; in vain do the fruits and the flowers, the sun and the soil, invite them to return; their wounds are still bleeding; they cannot forget that the wild beast's paw might again be upon them, and that their own blood might one day moisten the flowers which grow over the graves of their fathers. But I must leave this place. I could hardly tear myself away then, and I love to linger about it now. While I was enjoying the luxury of the terrace a messenger came from the captain to call us on board. With a feeling of the deepest interest I bade farewell, probably for ever, to my sorrowing hostess and to the beautiful gardens of Scio.

We mounted our mules, and in an hour were at the port. My feelings were so wrought upon that I felt my blood boil at the first Turk I met in the streets. I felt that I should like to sacrifice him to the shades of the murdered Greeks. I wondered that the Greeks did not kill every one on the island. I wondered that they could endure the sight of the turban. We found that the captain had hurried us away unnecessarily. We could not get out of the harbour, and were obliged to lounge about the town all day. We again made a circuit among the ruins; examined particularly those of the library, where we found an old woman who had once been an attendant there, living in a little room in the cellar, completely buried under the stones of the fallen building; and returning, sat down with a chibouk before the door of an old Turkish coffee-house fronting the harbour. Here I met an original in the person of the Dutch consul. He was an old Italian, and had been in America during the revolutionary war as _dragoman_, as he called it, to the Count de Grasse, though, from his afterward incidentally speaking of the count as "my master," I am inclined to think that the word dragoman, which here means a person of great character and trust, may be interpreted as "valet de chambre." The old consul was in Scio during the whole of the massacre, and gave me many interesting particulars respecting it. He hates the Greeks, and spoke with great indignation about the manner in which their dead bodies lay strewed about the streets for months after the massacre. "D--n them," he said, "he could not go anywhere without stumbling over them." As I began to have some apprehensions about being obliged to stay here another night, I thought I could not employ my time better than in trying to work out of the consul an invitation to spend it with him. But the old fellow was too much for me. When I began to talk about the unpleasantness of being obliged to spend the night on board, and the impossibility of spending it on shore, _having no acquaintance_ there, he began to talk poverty in the most up and down terms. I was a little discouraged, but I looked at his military coat, his cocked hat and cane, and considering his talk merely a sort of apology for the inferior style of housekeeping I would find, was ingeniously working things to a point, when he sent me to the right about by enumerating the little instances of kindness he had received from strangers who happened to visit the island; among others, from one--he had his name in his pocketbook; he should never forget him; perhaps I had heard of him--who, at parting, shook him affectionately by the hand, and gave him a doubloon and a Spanish dollar. I hauled off from the representative of the majesty of Holland, and perhaps, before this, have been served up to some new visitor as the "mean, stingy American."

In the evening we again got under weigh; before morning the wind was again blowing dead ahead; and about midday we put into the harbour of Foggi, a port in Asia Minor, and came to anchor under the walls of the castle, under the blood-red Mussulman flag. We immediately got into the boat to go ashore. This was my first port in Turkey. A huge ugly African, marked with the smallpox, with two pistols and a yataghan in his belt, stood on a little dock, waited till we were in the act of landing, and then rushed forward, ferocious as a tiger from his native sands, throwing up both his hands, and roaring out "Quarantino." This was a new thing in Turkey. Heretofore the Turks, with their fatalist notions, had never taken any precautions against the plague; but they had become frightened by the terrible ravages the disease was then making in Egypt, and imposed a quarantine upon vessels coming from thence. We were, however, suffered to land, and our first movement was to the coffee-house directly in front of the dock. The coffee-house was a low wooden building, covering considerable ground, with a large piazza, or, rather, projecting roof all around it. Inside and out there was a raised platform against the wall. This platform was one step from the floor, and on this step every one left his shoes before taking his seat on the matting. There were, perhaps, fifty Turks inside and out; sitting cross-legged, smoking the chibouk, and drinking coffee out of cups not larger than the shell of a Madeira-nut.

We kicked our shoes off on the steps, seated ourselves on a mat outside, and took our chibouk and coffee with an air of savoir faire that would not have disgraced the worthiest Moslem of them all. Verily, said I, as I looked at the dozing, smoking, coffee-sipping congregation around me, there are some good points about the Turks, after all. They never think--that hurts digestion; and they love chibouks and coffee--that shows taste and feeling. I fell into their humour, and for a while exchanged nods with my neighbours all around. Suddenly the bitterness of thought came upon me; I found that my pipe was exhausted. I replenished it, and took a sip of coffee. Verily, said I, there are few better things in this world than chibouks and coffee; they even make men forget there is blood upon their hands. The thought started me; I shrank from contact with my neighbours, cut my way through the volumes of smoke, and got out into the open air.

My companion joined me. We entered the walls and made a circuit of the town. It was a dirty little place, having one principal street lined with shops or bazars; every third shop, almost, being a cafteria, where a parcel of huge turbaned fellows were at their daily labours of smoking pipes and drinking coffee. The first thing I remarked as being strikingly different from a European city was the total absence of women. The streets were thronged with men, and not a woman was to be seen, except occasionally I caught a glimpse of a white veil or a pair of black eyes sparkling through the latticed bars of a window. Afterward, however, in walking outside the walls into the country, we met a large party of women. When we first saw them they had their faces uncovered; but, as soon as they saw us coming toward them, they stopped and arranged their long white shawls, winding them around their faces so as to leave barely space enough uncovered to allow them to see and breathe, but so that it was utterly impossible for us to distinguish a single one of their features.

Going on in the direction from which they came, and attracted by the mourning cypress, we came to a large burying-ground. It is situated on the side of a hill almost washed by the waves, and shaded by a thick grove of the funereal tree. There is, indeed, something peculiarly touching in the appearance of this tree; it seems to be endowed with feelings, and to mourn over the dead it shades. The monuments were generally a single upright slab of marble, with a turban on the top. There were many, too, in form like one of our oblong tombstones; and, instead of a slab of marble over the top, the interior was filled with earth, and the surface overrun with roses, evergreens, and flowers. The burying-grounds in the East are always favourite places for walking in; and it is a favourite occupation of the Turkish women to watch and water the flowers growing over the graves of their friends.

Toward evening we returned to the harbour. I withdrew from my companion, and, leaning against one of the gates of the city, fixed my eyes upon the door of a minaret, watching till the muezzin should appear, and, for the last time before the setting of the sun, call all good Mussulmans to prayer. The door opens toward Mecca, and a little before dark the muezzin came out, and, leaning over the railing with his face toward the tomb of the Prophet, in a voice, every tone of which fell distinctly upon my ear, made that solemn call which, from the time of Mohammed, has been addressed five times a day from the tops of the minarets to the sons of the faithful. "Allah! Allah! God is God, and Mohammed is his prophet. To prayer! to prayer!" Immediately an old Turk by my side fell upon his knees, with his face to the tomb of the Prophet; ten times, in quick succession, he bowed his forehead till it touched the earth; then clasped his hands and prayed. I never saw more rapt devotion than in this pious old Mussulman. I have often marked in Italy the severe observance of religious ceremonies; I have seen, for instance, at Rome, fifty penitents at a time mounting on their knees, and kissing, as they mounted, the steps of the Scala Santa, or holy staircase, by which, as the priests tell them, our Saviour ascended into the presence of Pontius Pilate. I have seen the Greek prostrate himself before a picture until he was physically exhausted; and I have seen the humble and pious Christian at his prayers, beneath the simple fanes and before the peaceful altars of my own land; but I never saw that perfect abandonment with which a Turk gives himself up to his God in prayer. He is perfectly abstracted from the things of this world; he does not regard time or place; in his closet or in the street, alone or in a crowd, he sees nothing, he hears nothing; the world is a blank; his God is everything. He is lost in the intensity of his devotion. It is a spectacle almost sublime, and for the moment you forget the polluted fountain of his religion, and the thousand crimes it sanctions, in your admiration of his sincerity and faith.

Not being able to find any place where we could sleep ashore, except on one of the mats of the coffee-house, head and heels with a dozen Turks, we went on board, and toward morning again got under weigh. We beat up to the mouth of the Gulf of Smyrna, but, with the sirocco blowing directly in our teeth, it was impossible to go farther. We made two or three attempts to enter, but in tacking the last time our old brig, which had hardly ballast enough to keep her keel under water, received such a rough shaking that we got her away before the wind, and at three o'clock P.M. were again anchored in the harbour of Foggi. I now began to think that there was a spell upon my movements, and that Smyrna, which was becoming to me a sort of land of promise, would never greet my longing eyes.

I was somewhat comforted, however, by remembering that I had never yet reached any port in the Mediterranean for which I had sailed, without touching at one or two intermediate ports; and that, so far, I had always worked right at last. I was still farther comforted by our having the good fortune to be able to procure lodging ashore, at the house of a Greek, the son of a priest. It was the Saturday before Easter Sunday, and the resurrection of our Saviour was to be celebrated at midnight, or, rather, the beginning of the next day, according to the rites and ceremonies of the Greek church. It was also the last of the forty days' fasting, and the next day commenced feasting. Supper was prepared for us, at which meat was put on the table for me only; my Greek friend being supposed not to eat meat during the days of fasting. He had been, however, two years out of Greece; and though he did not like to offend the prejudices of his countrymen, he did not like fasting. I felt for my fellow-traveller; and, cutting up some meat in small parcels, kept my eye upon the door while he whipped them into his mouth. After supper we lay down upon the divan, with large quilts over us, my friend having promised to rise at twelve o'clock and accompany me to the Greek church.

At midnight we were roused by the chant of the Greeks in the streets, on their way to the church. We turned out, and fell into a procession of five hundred people, making the streets as light as day with their torches. At the door of the church we found our host, sitting at a table with a parcel of wax tapers on one side and a box to receive money on the other. We each bought a taper and went in. After remaining there at least two hours, listening to a monotonous and unintelligible routine of prayers and chants, the priests came out of the holy doors, bearing aloft an image of our Saviour on the cross, ornamented with gold leaf, tassels, and festoons of artificial flowers; passed through the church, and out of the opposite door. The Greeks lighted their tapers and formed into a procession behind them, and we did the same. Immediately outside the door, up the staircase, and on each side of the corridor, allowing merely room enough for the procession to pass, were arranged the women, dressed in white, with long white veils, thrown back from their faces however, laid smooth over the tops of their heads, and hanging down to their feet. Nearly every woman, old or young, had a child in her arms. In fact, there seemed to be as great a mustering of children as of men and women, and, for aught that I could see, as much to the edification of the former as the latter. A continued chant was kept up during the movements of the procession, and perhaps for half an hour after the arrival of the priests at the courtyard, when it rose to a tremendous burst. The torches were waved in the air; a wild, unmeaning, and discordant scream or yell rang through the hollow cloisters, and half a dozen pistols, two or three muskets, and twenty or thirty crackers were fired. This was intended as a feu-de-joie, and was supposed to mark the precise moment of our Saviour's resurrection. In a few moments the phrensy seemed to pass away; the noise fell from a wild clamour to a slow chant, and the procession returned to the church. The scene was striking, particularly the part outside the church; the dead of night; the waving of torches; the women with their long white dresses, and the children in their arms, &c.; but, from beginning to end, there was nothing solemn in it.

Returned to the church, a priest came round with a picture of the Saviour risen; and, as far as I could make it out, holding in his hand the Greek flag, followed by another priest with a plate to receive contributions. He held out the picture to be kissed, then turned his hand to receive the same act of devotion, keeping his eye all the time upon the plate which followed to receive the offerings of the pious, as a sort of payment for the privilege of the kiss. His manner reminded me of the Dutch parson, who, immediately after pronouncing a couple man and wife, touching the bridegroom with his elbow, said, "And now where ish mine dollar?" I kissed the picture, dodged his knuckles, paid my money, and left the church. I had been there four hours, during which time, perhaps, more than a thousand persons had been completely absorbed in their religious ceremonies; and though beginning in the middle of the night, I have seen more yawning at the theatre or at an Italian opera than I saw there. They now began to disperse, though I remember I left a crowd of regular amateurs, at the head of whom were our sailors, still hanging round the desk of an exhorting priest, with an earnestness that showed a still craving appetite.

I do not wonder that the Turks look with contempt upon Christians, for they have constantly under their eyes the disgusting mummeries of the Greek church, and see nothing of the pure and sublime principles our religion inculcates. Still, however, there was something striking and interesting in the manner in which the Greeks in this Turkish town had kept themselves, as it were, a peculiar people, and, in spite of the brands of "dog" and "infidel," held fast to the religion they received from their fathers. There was nothing interesting about them as Greeks; they had taken no part with their countrymen in their glorious struggle for liberty; they were engaged in petty business, and bartered the precious chance of freedom once before them for base profits and ignoble ease; and even now were content to live in chains, and kiss the rod that smote them.

We returned to the house where we had slept; and, after coffee, in company with our host and his father, the priest, sat down to a meal, in which, for the first time in forty days, they ate meat. I had often remarked the religious observance of fast days among the common people in Greece. In travelling there I had more than once offered an egg to my guide on a fast day, but never could get one to accept anything that came so near to animal food, though, by a strange confusion of the principles of religious obligation, perhaps the same man would not have hesitated to commit murder if he had any inducement to do so. Mrs. Hill, at Athens, told me that, upon one occasion, a little girl in her school refused to eat a piece of cake because it was made with eggs.

At daylight I was lying on the floor looking through a crevice of the window-shutter at the door of the minaret, waiting for the muezzin's morning cry to prayer. At six o'clock I went out, and finding the wind still in the same quarter, without any apparent prospect of change, determined, at all hazards, to leave the vessel and go on by land. My friend and fellow-passenger was also very anxious to get to Smyrna, but would not accompany me, from an indefinite apprehension of plague, robbers, &c. I had heard so many of these rumours, all of which had proved to be unfounded, that I put no faith in any of them. I found a Turk who engaged to take me through in fourteen hours; and at seven o'clock I was in my saddle, charged with a dozen letters from captains, supercargoes, and passengers, whom I left behind waiting for a change of wind.

My Tartar was a big swarthy fellow, with an extent of beard and mustaches unusual even among his bearded countrymen. He was armed with a pair of enormous pistols and a yataghan, and was, altogether, a formidable fellow to look upon. But there was a something about him that I liked. There was a doggedness, a downright stubbornness that seemed honest. I knew nothing about him. I picked him up in the street, and took him in preference to others who offered, because he would not be beaten down in his price. When he saw me seated on my horse he stood by my side a little distance off, and looking at me without opening his lips, drew his belt tight around him, and adjusted his pistols and yataghan. His manner seemed to say that he took charge of me as a bale of goods, to be paid for on safe delivery, and that he would carry me through with fire and sword, if necessary. And now, said I, "Let fate do her worst;" I have a good horse under me, and in fourteen hours I shall be in Smyrna. "Blow winds and crack your cheeks;" I defy you.

My Tartar led off at a brisk trot, never opening his lips nor turning his head except occasionally to see how I followed him across a stream. At about ten o'clock he turned off from the horse-path into a piece of fine pasture, and, slipping the bridle off his horse, turned him loose to feed. He then did the same with mine, and, spreading my cloak on the ground for me to sit upon, sat down by my side and opened his wallet. His manner seemed to intimate a disposition to throw provisions into a common stock, no doubt expecting the gain to be on his side; but as I could only contribute a couple of rolls of bread which I bought as we rode through the town, I am inclined to think that he considered me rather a sponge.

While we were sitting there a travelling party came up, consisting of five Turks and three women. The women were on horseback, riding crosswise, though there were so many quilts, cushions, &c., piled on the backs of their horses that they sat rather on seats than on saddles. After a few words of parley with my Tartar, the men lifted the women from the horses, taking them in their arms, and, as it were, hauling them off, not very gracefully, but very kindly; and, spreading their quilts on the ground a short distance from us, turned their horses loose to feed, and sat down to make their morning meal. An unusual and happy thing for me the women had their faces uncovered nearly all the time, though they could not well have carried on the process of eating with them muffled up in the usual style. One of the women was old, the other two were exceedingly young; neither of them more than sixteen; each had a child in her arms, and, without any allowance for time and place, both were exceedingly beautiful. I do not say so under the influence of the particular circumstances of our meeting, nor with the view of making an incident of it, but I would have singled them out as such if I had met them in a ballroom at home. I was particularly struck with their delicacy of figure and complexion. Notwithstanding their laughing faces, their mirth, and the kind treatment of the men, I could not divest myself of the idea that they were caged birds longing to be free. I could not believe that a woman belonging to a Turk could be otherwise than unhappy. Unfortunately, I could not understand a word of their language; and as they looked from their turbaned lords to my stiff hat and frockcoat, they seemed to regard me as something the Tartar had just caught and was taking up to Constantinople as a present to the sultan. I endeavoured to show, however, that I was not the wild thing they took me to be; that I had an eye to admire their beauty, and a heart to feel for their servitude. I tried to procure from them some signal of distress; I did all that I could to get some sign to come to their rescue, and to make myself generally agreeable. I looked sentimentally. This they did not seem to understand at all. I smiled; this seemed to please them better; and there is no knowing to what a point I might have arrived, but my Tartar hurried me away; and I parted on the wild plains of Turkey with two young and beautiful women, leading almost a savage life, whose personal graces would have made them ornaments in polished and refined society. Verily, said I, the Turks are not so bad, after all; they have handsome wives, and a handsome wife comes next after chibouks and coffee.

I was now reminded at every step of my being in an oriental country by the caravans I was constantly meeting. Caravans and camels are more or less associated with all the fairy scenes and glowing pictures of the East. They have always presented themselves to my mind with a sort of poetical imagery, and they certainly have a fine effect in a description or in a picture; but, after all, they are ugly-looking things to meet on the road. I would rather see the two young Turk-_esses_ again than all the caravans in the East. The caravan is conducted by a guide on a donkey, with a halter attached to the first camel, and so on from camel to camel through the whole caravan. The camel is an exceedingly ugly animal in his proportions, and there is a dead uniformity in his movement; with a dead, vacant expression in his face, that is really distressing. If a man were dying of thirst in the desert, it would be enough to drive him to distraction to look in the cool, unconcerned, and imperturbable face of his camel. But their value is inestimable in a country like this, where there are no carriage roads, and where deserts and drought present themselves in every direction.

One of the camel scenes, the encampment, is very picturesque, the camels arranged around on their knees in a circle, with their heads to the centre, and the camel-drivers with their bales piled up within; and I was struck with another scene; we came to the borders of a stream, which it was necessary to cross in a boat. The boat was then on the other side, and the boatman and camel driver were trying to get on board some camels. When we came up they had got three on board, down on their knees in the bottom of the boat, and were then in the act of coercing the fourth. The poor brute was frightened terribly; resisted with all his might, and put forth most piteous cries; I do not know a more distressing noise than the cry of a brute suffering from fear; it seems to partake of the feeling that causes it, and carries with it something fearful; but the cries of the poor brute were vain; they got him on board, and in the same way urged on board three others. They then threw in the donkey, and seven camels and the donkey were so stowed in the bottom of the boat, that they did not take up much more room than calves on board of our country boats.

In the afternoon I met another travelling party of an entirely different description. If before I had occasionally any doubts or misgivings as to the reality of my situation; if sometimes it seemed to be merely a dream, that it could not be that I was so far from home, wandering alone on the plains of Asia, with a guide whom I never saw till that morning, whose language I could not understand, and upon whose faith I could not rely; if the scenes of turbaned Turks, of veiled women, of caravans and camels, of graveyards with their mourning cypress and thousands of tombstones, where every trace of the cities which supplied them with their dead had entirely disappeared; if these and the other strange scenes around me would seem to be the mere creations of a roving imagination, the party which I met now was so marked in its character, so peculiar to an oriental country, and to an oriental country only, that it roused me from my waking dreams, fixed my wandering thoughts, and convinced me, beyond all peradventure, that I was indeed far from home, among a people "whose thoughts are not as our thoughts, and whose ways are not as our ways;" in short, in a land where ladies are not the omnipotent creatures that they are with us.

This party was no other than the ladies of a harem. They were all dressed in white, with their white shawls wrapped around their faces, so that they effectually concealed every feature, and could bring to bear only the artillery of their eyes. I found this, however, to be very potent, as it left so much room for the imagination; and it was a very easy matter to make a Fatima of every one of them. They were all on horseback, not riding sidewise, but _otherwise_; though I observed, as before, that their saddles were so prepared that their delicate limbs were not subject to that extreme expansion required by the saddle of the rougher sex. They were escorted by a party of armed Turks, and followed by a man in Frank dress, who, as I after understood, was the physician of the harem. They were thirteen in number, just a baker's dozen, and belonged to a pacha who was making his annual tour of the different posts under his government, and had sent them on before to have the household matters all arranged upon his arrival. And no doubt, also, they were to be in readiness to receive him with their smiles; and if they continued in the same humour in which I saw them, he must have been a happy man who could call them all his own. I had not fairly recovered from the cries of the poor camel when I heard their merry voices: verily, thought I, stopping to catch the last musical notes, there are exceedingly good points about the Turks: chibouks, coffee, and as many wives as they please. It made me whistle to think of it. Oh, thought I, that some of our ladies could see these things; that some haughty beauty, at whose feet dozens of worthy and amiable young gentlemen are sighing themselves into premature wrinkles and ugliness, might see these things.

I am no rash innovator. I would not sweep away the established customs of our state of society. I would not lay my meddling fingers upon the admitted prerogatives of our ladies; but I cannot help asking myself if, in the rapid changes of this turning world, changes which completely alter rocks and the hardest substances of nature, it may not by possibility happen that the tenour of a lady's humour will change. What a goodly spectacle to see those who are never content without a dozen admirers in their train, following by dozens in the train of one man! But I fear me much that this will never be, at least in our day. Our system of education is radically wrong. The human mind, says some philosopher, and the gentleman is right, is like the sand upon the shore of the sea. You may write upon it what character you please. _We_ begin by writing upon their innocent unformed minds, that, "Born for their use, we live but to oblige them." The consequence is, I will not say what; for I hope to return among them and kiss the rod in some fair hand; but this I do know, that here the "twig is so bent" that they become as gentle, as docile, and as tractable as any domestic animal. I say again, there are many exceeding good points about the Turks.

At about six o'clock we came in sight of Smyrna, on the opposite side of the gulf, and still a long way off. At dusk we were directly opposite the city; and although we had yet to make a long circuit round the head of the gulf, I was revelling in the bright prospect before me. Dreams of pulling off my pantaloons; delightful visions of clean sheets and a Christian bed flitted before my eyes. Yes, said I to my pantaloons and shirt, ye worthy and faithful servants, this night ye shall have rest. While other garments have fallen from me by the way, ye have stuck to me. And thou, my gray pantaloons, little did the neat Parisian tailor who made thee think that the strength of his stitching would ever be tested by three weeks' uninterrupted wear; but to-morrow thou shalt go into the hands of a master, who shall sew on thy buttons and sew up thy rents; and thou, my--I was going on with words of the same affectionate import to my shirt, stockings, and drawers, which, however, did not deserve so well of me, for they had in a measure _dropped off_ on the way, when my Tartar came to a dead stop before the door of a cabin, dismounted, and made signs to me to do the same. But I began now to have some notions of my own; heretofore I had been perfectly passive; I had always done as I was told, but in sight of Smyrna I became restiff. I talked and shouted to him, pointed to the city, and turned my horse as though I was going on alone. My Tartar, however, paid no attention to me; he very coolly took off my carpet-bag and carried it into the cabin, lighted his pipe, and sat down by the door, looking at me with the most imperturbable gravity. I had hardly had time to admire his impudence, and to calculate the chances of my being able, alone at night, to cross the many streams which emptied into the gulf, when the wind, which had been rising for some time, became very violent, and the rain began to fall in torrents. With a sigh I bade farewell to the bright visions that had deluded me, gave another sigh to the uncertainty of all human calculations, the cup and the lip, &c., and took refuge in the cabin.

What a substitute for the pretty little picture I had drawn! Three Turks were sitting round a brazier of charcoal frying doughballs. Three rugs were spread in three corners of the cabin, and over each of them were the eternal pistols and yataghan. There was nothing there to defend; their miserable lives were not worth taking; why were these weapons there? The Turks at first took no notice of me, and I had now to make amends for my backwardness in entering. I resolved to go to work boldly, and at once elbowed among them for a seat around the brazier. The one next me on my right seemed a little struck by my easy ways; he put his hand on his ribs to feel how far my elbow had penetrated, and then took his pipe from his mouth and offered it to me. The ice broken, I smoked the pipe to the last whiff, and handed it to him to be refilled; with all the horrors of dyspepsy before my eyes, I scrambled with them for the last doughball, and, when the attention of all of them was particularly directed toward me, took out my watch, held it over the lamp, and wound it up. I addressed myself particularly to the one who had first taken notice of me, and made myself extremely agreeable by always smoking his pipe. After coffee and half a dozen pipes, he gave me to understand that I was to sleep with him upon his mat, at which I slapped him on the back and cried out, "Bono," having heard him use that word apparently with a knowledge of its meaning.

I was surprised in the course of the evening to see one of them begin to undress, knowing that such was not the custom of the country, but found that it was only a temporary disrobing for sporting purposes, to hunt fleas and bedbugs; by which I had an opportunity of comparing the Turkish with some I had brought with me from Greece; and though the Turk had great reason to be proud of his, I had no reason to be ashamed of mine. I now began to be drowsy, and should soon have fallen asleep; but the youngest of the party, a sickly and sentimental young man, melancholy and musical, and, no doubt, in love, brought out the common Turkish instrument, a sort of guitar, on which he worked with untiring vivacity, keeping time with his head and heels. My friend accompanied him with his voice, and this brought out my Tartar, who joined in with groans and grunts which might have waked the dead. But my cup was not yet full. During the musical festival my friend and intended bedfellow took down from a shelf above me a large plaster, which he warmed over the brazier. He then unrolled his turban, took off a plaster from the back of his head, and disclosed a wound, raw, gory, and ghastly, that made my heart sink within me: I knew that the plague was about Smyrna; I had heard that it was on this road; I involuntarily recurred to the Italian prayer, "Save me from the three miseries of the Levant: plague, fire, and the dragoman." I shut my eyes; I had slept but two hours the night before; had ridden twelve hours that day on horseback; I drew my cloak around me; my head sank upon my carpet-bag, and I fell asleep, leaving the four Turks playing cards on the bottom of a pewter plate. Once during the night I was awakened by my bedfellow's mustaches tickling my lips. I turned my back and slept on.

In the morning my Tartar, with one jerk, stood me upright on the floor, and holding me in that position until I got awake, kicked open the door, and pointed to my horse standing before it ready saddled and bridled. In three hours I was crossing the caravan bridge, a bridge over the beautiful Melissus, on the banks of which Homer was born; and picking my way among caravans, which for ages have continued to cross this bridge laden with all the riches of the East, I entered the long-looked-for city of Smyrna, a city that has braved the reiterated efforts of conflagrations, plagues, and earthquakes; ten times destroyed, and ten times risen from her ruins; the queen of the cities of Anatolia; extolled by the ancients as Smyrna the lovely, the crown of Ionia, the pride of Asia. But old things have passed away, and the ancient city now figures only under the head of arrivals in a newspaper, in the words and figures following, that is to say, "Brig Betsy, Baker master, 57 days from Smyrna, with figs and raisins to order. Mastic dull, opium rising."

In half an hour I was in the full enjoyment of a Turkish bath; lolled half an hour on a divan, with chibouk and coffee, and came out fresh as if I had spent the last three weeks training for the ring. Oh, these Turks are luxurious dogs. Chibouks, coffee, hot baths, and as many wives as they please. What a catalogue of human enjoyments! But I intend Smyrna as a place of rest, and, in charity, give you the benefit, of it.

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